■:ri/;iu:.»:. 



UBRARY OF CONGRESS 





DDD13t.DlEE7 



L E T T B E S 



FROM 



NEW YORK. 



LETTERS 



FROM 



:N^ E W YORK. 



FIRST AND SECOND SERIES. 



. BY 

L. MAEIA CHILD, 

AUTHOR OF "PHILOTHEA," "THE MOTHER'S BOOK," '*THE GIRL's BOOK," 
"flowers FOR CHILDREN," ETC. 



" Every gift of noble origin 
Is breathed upon by Hope's perpetual breath." 

Wordsworth. 



LONDON: F. PITMAN, 20 PATERNOSTER ROW. 

EDINBURGH: JOHN MENZIES & CO. 

GLASGOW: T. D. MORISON. 

1879. 



F 



\'l-i 






GLASGOW : 
PRINTED BY H. NISBET AND 00. 



^-^ 



r 



7 



PEE FACE. 



There are tliouglits that live and breathe that cannot die, for 
•they are emanations from an immortal source; such are those 
from the pen of the gifted authoress of "Letters from New 
York" 

I doubt not but the reprinting of these Letters in this 
country will be a boon to many. 

Mrs. Lydia Maria Child was one of those noble band of 
women whose heroic souls were tried in the fire of the old 
anti-slavery days. Her "Appeal " was the principal tract issued 
hj the Abolitionists, and her friends and coadjutors were the 
heroes and heroines of that day. I had the privilege when in 
America of visiting her home, accompanied by Mr. and Mrs. 
Blackwell, of Boston. 

Mrs. Child received us with graceful cordiality. Her home 
is among the flowers she has planted, and she herself is a 
lovely spirit, looking toward sunset with the light of heaven 
on her brow, for she is seventy-seven years of age. We sat 
as charmed listeners to her conversation, which is as enter- 
taining as her writings. There are some souls to whom it 
is given to develope the glorious possibilities of the human 



VI PREFACE. 

spirit in themselves and others. Tliey see the soul of things, 
and the expression of their thoughts seems to lift one up to a 
diviner life, and for the time we walk Paradise unconsciously ; 
and yet this lady of rare culture, learning, and refinement, is 
intensely practical, and believes in the dignity of labour, 
keeping her own home in beautiful order with her own hands* 
I find in Appleton's American Cyclopaedia the following : — 

Lydia Maria Child, an American Authoress, born at Med- 
ford, Mass., Feb. 11, 1802. 

In 1824 she published her first book, "Holernok, an Indian 
Story," which was followed the next year by "The Kebels, a 
Tale of the Hevolution." The scene was laid in Massachusetts, 
and some of the characters were the historical men of tliat 
period. The book for several years held its place as a standard 
novel, the time and events with which it dealt giving it a 
strong hold upon the popular esteem. A speech which she 
put into the mouth of James Otis was believed by many to 
have been actually delivered by him. A sermon of White- 
field's was also given, which was inserted in the New England 
School Reading Books as a genuine sermon of the great 
preacher. In 1826 she commenced the "Juvenile Miscellany," 
a monthly Magazine, which, for eight years, was under her 
management. She published a cookery book under the title of 
"The American Frugal Housewife," which later publications 
upon the same subject have not displaced. 

In October, 1828, she was married to David Lee Child, 



PREFACE. ' Vll 

a lawyer of Boston. "The Girl's Own Book/' and "The 
Mother's Book" (1831), testified to her strong interest iii 
practical education. About this time the anti-slavery move- 
ment was commenced in Boston, and Mrs. Child identified 
herself with it at the beginning. One of the first distinctive 
anti-slavery books was her "Appeal in behalf of that Class of 
Americans called Africans," in which she advocated the im- 
mediate emancipation of the blacks. This is her largest 
and most comprehensive work upon the subject of slavery, 
but it was followed in subsequent years by various smaller 
publications of a similar character. In 1836 she published 
"Philothea," a Grecian Bomance of the time of Pericles and 
Aspasia. In 1841, she removed to New York to take charge 
as Editor of the " National Anti-slavery Standard," of which 
she remained Editor, assisted by Mr. Child, for two years. In 
its columns she commenced a series of "Letters from New 
York," which, with others written subsequently, were collected 
in two volumes — 1843-1844. She afterwards published a 
" History of the Condition'of "Women in all Ages and Nations" 
(2 vols., 1845). "Biographies of Good Wives" (1846), and 
several volumes of Stories for Children. In 1859 she wrote a 
Letter of Sympathy to John Brown, which involved her in 
a correspondence with Governor Wise and Mrs. Mason of 
Virginia. This correspondence was published in pamphlet 
form, of which over 300,000 copies were circulated. Her 
other works are — "Life of Isaac T. Hopper," 1853; "Progress 



Vlll PREFACE. 

of Eeligious Ideas" (3 vols., 1855); "Autumnal Leaves" 
(1857); "Looking Toward Sunset" (1860); "The Freedman's 
Book" (1865); and "A Romance of the Eepublic" (1867). 

I may add, that among Mrs. Child's treasures, I saw a 
portrait on her parlour wall of her late husband, and under- 
neath was written — "David Lee Child, a learned, just, and 
loving soul; went hence, August, 1873." And so Mrs. Child 
is a widow, but she has had the rare happiness of being sus- 
tained by a noble husband in doing work for humanity, and 
ever " the prophet's hands have been held heavenward to the 
going down of the sun." 

Margaret E. Parker. 

Dundee, October, 1879. 



CONTENTS. 



FIRST SERIES. 

LETTER I. PAGE 

The Battery in the Morning — Streets of Modern Babylon — Street 

Musicians, ---------- 1 

LETTER II. 
VVashingtonians — Law of Love and Law of Force — Trusting in" each 

other's Honesty — The Dog-Killers, 4 

LETTER III. 

Sectarian Walls — Ideas of God — The poor Woman's Garden — The 

Five Points — Society makes the Crime it Punishes, - - - 9 

LETTER IV. 
Hoboken — Weehawken — Hamilton's Duel — Indian Sarcasm, - - 13 

LETTER Y. 

Highland Benevolent Society — Clans and Sects, - - - - 17 

LETTER VI. 
The Jews — Black Jews— Old Clothes — Reading by Lamplight in the 

Day-Time, 20 

LETTER VII. 

Rev. John Summerfield — The Farmer crazed by Speculators — Green- 
wood Cemetery — Wearing Mourning, - - - - - 28 

LETTER VIII. 

The Shipping— The Yankee Boy and the Emperor of Russia— The 

Kamschatka and La Belle Poule, 32 

LETTER IX. 

Grant Thorburn, the Original of Gait's "Lawrie Todd"— Ravens- 
wood, -----------39 



X CONTENTS. 

LETTER X. PAGE 

Varieties of Character and Changing of Population of New York — 
Anecdote of Absent Men — The Bagpipe Player — Burial of a 
Stranger in the Western Forest, 45 

LETTER XL 

The Coloured Methodist Preacher — Story of Zeek, the Shrewd 
Slave, - 48 

LETTER XIL 

The New Year — Past and Future — ^lusic written on Sand by Vibra- 
tion — Caution to Reformers, 56 

LETTER XIII. 

Scenery within the Soul — Valley de Sham — Truth in Act as well as 
Word, f)0 

LETTER XIV. 

Newspaper Boy — The Foreign Boys and their Mother — The Drunken 

Woman — The Burying Ground for the Poor, - - - - 65 

LETTER XV. 
Macdonald Clarke, the Mad Poet, 70 

LETTER XVI. 
A Great Fire — Jane Plato's Garden — Money is not Wealth, - - 77 

LETTER XVII. 

Doves in Broadway — The Dove and the Pirate — Prisoners and 

Doves — Doddridge's Dream — Genius Inspired by Holiness, - 82 

LETTER XVIII. 

Origin of Manhattan — Antiquities of New York — David Reynolds 
—The Fish and the Ring, 86 

LETTER XIX. 

Animal Magnetism — The Soul Watching its own Body — An Anec- 
dote of Second Sight, 93 



CONTENTS. XI 

LETTER XX. page 

The Birds — Anecdote of Petion's Daughter — The Bird, the Snake, 
and the White Ash — Story of my Swallows — The Sjjanish Par- 
rot, 98 

LETTER XXI. 
Staten Island — Sailor's Snug Harbour, 105 

LETTER XXII. 
The Non-Resisting Colony, 108 

LETTER XXIII. 

The Florida Slave-trader, and Patriarch— Boswell's remarks on the 

Slave Trade— The Fixed Point of A iew, Ill 

LETTER XXIV. 

The Red Roof —The little Child Picking a White Clover— Music and 
Fireworks at Castle Garden, - - 119 

LETTER XXV. 
Rockland Lake — Major Andre — The Dutch Farmers, - - - 124 

LETTER XXVL 
Flowers — All Being Spirally Linked, - 132 

LETTER XXVII. 

Music and Light — The Musical Instrument Invented by Guzikow 
—Music of the Planets— The Burning Bell Tower at Hamburg 
— Mysterious Music in Pacagoula Bay — The Mocking Bird and 
the Bob-o'-Link — The Response of Musical Instruments to each 
other, 136 

LETTER XXVIII. 

The little Match Girl— Beautiful Anecdote of a Street Musician — 
Anecdote of a Spanish Donkey — Horses Tamed by Kindness — 
The one Voice, which Brought a Discordant Choir into Har- 
mony, 143 



Xll CONTENTS. 

LETTER XXIX. page 

Blackwell's Island — Long Island Farms — Anecdote from Silvio 

Pellico — A Model Aims-House among the Society of Friends, - 148 

LETTER XXX. 

Croton Water — The Fountains — Fear of Public Opinion — Social 
Freedom — Anecdote of the little Boy that ran away from Pro- 
vidence, ----------- 158 

LETTER XXXI. 

Capital Punishment — Conversation with Wm. Ladd — Two Anec- 
dotes, Showing the Danger of Trusting to Circumstantial 
Evidence, - - - 164 

LETTER XXXII. 

Mercy to Criminals — Mrs. Fry's Answer made Good by being 

Beloved ; Still Higher to Love Others, 1 73 

LETTER XXXIII. 

Catholic Church — Pusejdsm — Worship of Irish Labourers — Anec- 
dote of the Irish, 178 

LETTER XXXIV. 
Woman's Rights, 184 

LETTER XXXV. 

Lightning Daguerrotype — Electricity — Effects of Climate, - - 190 

LETTER XXXVI. 
The Indians, 196 

LETTER XXXVII. 
Green Old Age — Swedenborg and Fourier, 203 

LETTER XXXVIII. 

The Snow Storm— The Cold-Footed, Warm-Hearted little Ones, - 207 



CONTENTS. XIU 

LETTER XXXIX. page 

The Ministrations of Sorrow, - -- - - - - -211 

LETTER XL. 

Mid-Day in New York — Storks of Nuremberg — All Nations are 

Brethren, 214 



SECOND SEBIES. 

LETTER I. 

Christmas — The principles of Peace — The Town that would not 
Fight — A Christmas Visitor to the Poor — High Rents paid by 
the Poor in New York ; their kindness to each other, - - 219 

LETTER II. 
Ole Bui heard for the first time — The vast significance of Music, - 225 

• LETTER III. 

New Year's Festivities — The Callithumpian Band — The Nymph 

Crotona, 230 

LETTER IV. 

Reminiscences of a former State of Existence — The Remembered 

Home, 233 

LETTER V. 
The Story of poor Charity Bowery, 246 

LETTER VI. 
Mnemonics, or Artificial Memory — Wonderful instances of Memory 
— Anecdote of Voltaire ; of Pope Clement 6th — Systems of 
Mnemonics — Dickens' Christmas Carol, 253 

LETTER VII. 

Valentme's Day — Story of the Umbrella Girl and Lord Henry Stuart, 260 



XIV CONTENTS. 

LETTER VIIT. page 

Description of Mammoth Cave, 267 

LETTER IX. 

A Walk down Broadway — The little Hoop-Girl and her Brother, - 283 

LETTER X. 

Hope Always — Human Progress — Emancipation in the British West 

Indies — The position of Ireland — O'Comiell, - - - - 285 

LETTER XI. 

Driesbach's Menagerie — Lectures on Anatomy — Analogy between 

the circulation of the Blood and the progress of Truth in Society, 292 

LETTER XII. 

Spiritual Correspondences, illustrated largely by Music — Correspon- 
dence of Light, of Water, of Oil, of Clothing, - - - - 297 

LETTER XIII. 

A popular definition of the original application of the word Trans- 
cendental — The Transcendental Style of Writing — Playful ac- 
count of a Transcendental Conversation, 305 

LETTER XIV. 
Anecdotes of Hannah Adams, - 310 

LETTER XV. 

Animals — Judge Edmonds and the Kitten — Amusing Anecdote of a 

Fox — Traditions concerning Pythagoras, - - - - 316 

LETTER XVI. 
Waste Lands of Virginia— The Deserted Church, - - - .-321 

LETTER XVII. 

The Eccentric German— The Burgomaster of Stuttgard — Swabian 

Bonnets, 325 



CONTENTS. XV 

LETTER XVIII. pagb 

Fourth of July — Fireworks — Native Americans and Foreigners, - .334 

LETTER XIX. 

Children in Union Park — The House covered with Vines — Fountains 
— Bath for the Poor — Croton Water — The Alhambra — Phil- 
harmonic Concerts — Italian Opera — Castle Garden — Niblo's 
Garden — Vauxhall — The Night Blooming Cereus — Hoboken — 
American Museum — Theatres, 338 

LETTER XX. 

Genius and Skill — The Romance of Thot and Freia, - - - 345 

LETTER XXI. 

Steamboat Excursions — Music — Saturn and the Earth — The Sailor's 
Home — Institution at Rennes — The large-souled Mechanic, - 360 

LETTER XXII. 

Swedenborg's Views of the Future Life — The Doctrine of Correspon- 
dence — Spiritual Correspondences of Music, - . . . 3(55 

LETTER XXIII. 

The Arts' Union — Bonfield, Cropsey, Leutze, Crawford, Powers, 

Kneeland, 375 

LETTER XXIV. 

Greenwood Cemetery — The apparently Dead restored to Life — 

Chime of Bells in Philadelphia— The Swiss Bell-Ringers, - - 378 

LETTER XXV. 

The Violin — EflFects of Scenery on Music — The Northmen — Ex- 
pression of Scotch and Irish ]\Iusic — Lizst's Piano-playing — 
Lines to Ole Bui, 384 

LETTER XXVI. 

The Millerites — Sir Harry Falkland — Various calculations concern- 
ing the End of the World, 389 



XVI CONTENTS. 

LETTER XXVII. paoe 

Autumn Woods — Mountains — Profitable investments in Religion — 

President Edwards, 394 

LETTER XXVIII. 

Spirit of Trade — Amusing Advertisements — Razor Strops — Luck 
and Knack — Self -Love — Thorough Bass, or Fundamental Har- 
mony—The Perfect Chord of Music and of Colours — Fourier's 
Perfect Social Chord— The Major and Minor Mode, - - 399 

LETTER XXIX. 

The Prison Association — Encouragement instead of Driving — The 
Criminal's account of her brief Trial — Anecdotes of individuals 
saved by the kindness of Isaac T. Hopper — Gentleness toward 
the Insane — Dorothea L. Dix, - 107 

LETTER XXX. 

Ole Bui's Niagara and Solitude of the Prairie — Genius and Criticism 
— Anecdote of Haydn and Beethoven — The tone of an Instru- 
ment changed by the manner of playing upon it, - - - 418 

LETTER XXXI. 

Increase of Luxury in New York — Employment essential to Happi- 
ness — Women peculiarly injured by the want of high motives to 
Exertion, 423 



LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 



LETTER I. 

THE BATTERY IN THE MORNING — STREETS OF MODERN BABYLON — 

STREET MUSICIANS. 

August 19, 1841. 

You ask what is now my opinion of this great Babylon; and 
playfully remind me of former philippics, and a long string of 
vituperative alliterations, such as magnificence and mud, finery 
and filth, diamonds and dirt, bullion and brass-tape, &c., (fee. 
Nor do you forget my first impressions of the city, when we 
arrived at early dawn, amid fog and drizzling rain, the expiring 
lamps adding their smoke to the impure air, and close beside 
us a boat called the ''Fairy Queen," laden with dead hogs. 

"Well, this Babylon remains the same as then. The din of 
crowded life, and the eager chase for gain, still run through its 
streets, like the perpetual murmur of a hive. Wealth dozes 
on couches, thrice piled, and canopied with damask, while 
poverty camps on the dirty pavement, or sleeps off its wretch- 
edness in the watch-house. There, amid the splendour of 
Broadway, sits the blind negro beggar, with horny hand and 
tattered garments, while opposite stands the stately mansions 
of the old slave trader, railway and stock jobber, still laughing 
to scorn the cobweb laws, through which the strong can break 
so easily. 

In Wall Street, and elsewhere, Mammon, as usual, coolly 
calculates his chance of extracting a penny from war, pesti- 
lence, and famine; and Commerce, with her loaded drays, and 
iaded skeletons of horses, is as busy as ever "fulfilling the 
world's contract with Satan." The noisy discord of the street- 
cries gives the ear no rest; and the weak voice of weary child- 
hood often makes the heart ache for the poor little wanderer, 
prolonging his task far into the hours of night. Sometimes, 

A 



2 LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 

the harsh sounds are pleasantly varied by some feminine voice, 
proclaiming, in musical cadence, " Hot corn ! hot corn ! " with 
the poetical addition, "Lily white corn. Buy my lily white 
corn!" When this sweet, wandering voice salutes my ear, my 
heart replies — 

*' 'Tis a glancing gleam o' the gift of song — 
And the soul that speaks hath suffered WTong. " 

There was a time when all these things would have passed 
by me, like the flitting figures of the magic lantern, or the 
changing scenery of a theatre, sufficient only for the amuse- 
ment of an hour. But now, I have lost the inclination for 
looking merely on the surface. Every condition seems to me 
to come from the Infinite, to be filled with the Infinite, to be 
tending towards the Infinite. Do I see crowds of men hasten- 
ing to extinguish a fire ? I see not merely uncouth garbs, and 
fantastic, flickering lights, of lurid hue, like a trampling trooj) 
of gnomes — but straightway my mind is filled with thoughts 
about mutual helpfulness, human sympathy, the common bond 
of brotherhood, and the mysteriously deep foundations on which 
society rests; or rather, on which it so often reels and totters. 

But I am cutting the lines deep, when I meant only to give 
you an airy, unfinished sketch. I will answer your question, 
by saying that, though New York remains the same, I like it 
better. This is partly because I am like the Lady's Delight, 
ever prone to take root, and look up with a smile, in whatever 
soil you place it ; and partly because bloated disease, and black 
gutters, and pigs filthy and ugly, no longer constitute the fore- 
ground in my picture of New York. I have become more 
familiar with the pretty parks, dotted about here and there; 
with the shaded alcoves of the various public gardens; with 
blooming nooks, and " sunny spots of greenery." I am fast 
inclining to the belief, that the Battery rivals our beautiful 
Boston Common. The fine old trees are indeed wanting ; but 
the newly-planted groves ofler the light, flexible gracefulness of 
youth, to compete with their matured majesty of age. In 
extent, and variety of surface, this noble promenade is greatly 
inferior to ours; but there is 

"The sea, the sea, the open sea; 
The fresh, the bright, the ever free." 

Most fitting emblem of the Infinite, this trackless pathway 
of a world ! heaving and stretching to meet the sky it never 



LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 6 

reaches — like the eager, unsatisfied aspirations of the human 
soul. The most beautiful landscape is imperfect without this 
feature. In the eloquent language of Lamartine, "The sea is 
to the scenes of nature what the eye is to a fine countenance; 
it illuminates the face, it imparts to the features that radiant 
physiognomy, which makes them live, speak, enchant, and 
fascinate the affections of those who contemplate them." 

If you deem me heretical in preferring the Battery to the 
Common, consecrated by so many pleasant associations of my 
youth, I know you will forgive me, if you go there in the 
silence of midnight, to feel the breeze on your cheek, like the 
kiss of a friend ; to hear the continual plashing of the sea, like 
the cool sound of oriental fountains; to see the moon look 
lovingly on the sea-nymphs, and throw down wealth of jewels 
on their shining hair; to look on the ships in their dim and 
distant beauty, each containing within itself a little world of 
human thought, and human passion. Or go, when "night, 
with her thousand diamond eyes, looks down into the heart, 
making it tender" — when shadows float above us, dark and 
solemn, scarcely reflecting their image in the black mirror of 
the ocean. The city lamjDS around you, like a shining belt of 
descended constellations, fit for the zone of Urania; while the 
pure bright stars peep through the dancing foliage, and speak 
to the soul of thoughtful shepherds on the ancient plains of 
Chaldea. And there, also, like mimic Fancy, playing fantastic 
freaks in the very presence of heavenly Imagination, stands 
Castle Garden — with its gay perspective of coloured lamps, like 
a fairy grotto, where imprisoned fire-spirits send up sparkling 
wreaths, or rockets laden with glittering ear-drops, caught by 
the floating sea-nymphs, as they fall. 

But if you would see the Battery in all its glory, look at it 
when, through the misty mantle of retreating dawn, is seen the 
golden light of the rising sun! Look at the horizon, where 
earth, sea, and sky, kiss each other, in robes of reflected glory ! 
The ships stretch their sails to the coming breeze, and glide 
majestically along — fit and graceful emblems of the past ; 
steered by necessity; the will constrained by outward force. 
Quickly the steam-boat passes them by — its rapidly revolving 
wheel made golden by the sunlight, and dropping diamonds to 
the laughing Nereids, profusely as pearls from Prince Ester- 
hazy's embroidered coat. In that steamer, see you not an 
appropriate type of the busy, powerful, self-conscious present \ 



1 LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 

Of man's will conquering outward force; and tlius making the 
elements his servants 1 

From this southern extremity of the city, anciently called 
" The Wall of the Half-Moon," you may, if you like, pass along 
the Bowery to Bloomingdale, on the north. What a combina- 
ation of flowery sounds to take captive the imagination ! It is 
a pleasant road, much used for fashionable drives; but the 
lovely names scarcely keep the promise they give the ear; 
especially to one accustomed to the beautiful environs of Boston. 

During your ramble, you may meet wandering musicians. 
Perhaps a poor Tyrolese, with his street-organ, or a Scotch 
Highlander, with shrill bag-pipe, decorated with tartan ribbons. 
Let them who will, despise their humble calling. Small skill, 
indeed, is needed to grind forth that machinery of sounds ; but 
my heart salutes them with its benison, in common with all 
things that cheer this weary world. I have little sympathy 
with the severe morality that drove these tuneful idlers from 
the streets of Boston. They are to the drudging city, what 
spring birds are to the country. The world has passed from its 
youthful, troubadour age, into the thinking, toiling age of in- 
cessant labour. This we may not regret, because it needs must 
be. But welcome, most welcome, all that brings back remi- 
niscences of its childhood, in the cheering voice of poetry and 
song! 

Therefore blame me not, if I turn wearily aside from the 
dusty road of reforming duty, to gather flowers in sheltered 
nooks, or play with gems in hidden grottoes. The practical 
has striven hard to sufibcate the ideal within me; but it receives 
glimpses of heaven and is immortal, and therefore it cannot 
die. It needs but a glance of beauty from earth or sky, and it 
starts into blooming life, like the aloe touched by fairy wand. 



LETTER II. 

WASHINGTONIANS — LAW OF LOVE AND LAW OF FORCE — TRUSTING 
IN EACH other's HONESTY — THE DOG-KILLERS. 

August 26, 1841. 

You think my praises of the Battery exaggerated; perhaps 
they are so; but there are some points on which I am exuber- 



LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 5 

ant — nrnsic, moonliglit, and the sea. There are other points, 
also, besides, on which most American juries would be prone 
to convict me of hallucination. You know a wise lawyer defined 
insanity to be "a differing in opinion from the mass of man- 
kind." By this rule, I am as mad as a March hare; though, 
as Andrew Fairservice said, " Why a March hare should be 
more mad in March than in Michaelmas, is more than I ken." 

I admit that Boston, in her extensive and airy common, pos- 
sesses a blessing beyond other cities, but I am not the less 
dis2:)0sed to be thankful for the circumscribed, but well-shaded 
limits of the Washington Parade Ground, and Union Park, 
with its nicely trimmed circle of hedge, its well-rolled gravel 
walks, and its velvet greensward, shaven as smooth as a Quaker 
beau. The exact order of its arrangement would be offensive 
in the country; and even here the eye of taste would prefer 
variations and undulation of outline ; but trimness seems more 
in place in a city, than amid the graceful confusion of nature; 
and neatness has a charm in New York, by reason of its ex- 
ceeding rarity. St. John's Park, though not without pretensions 
to beauty, never strikes my eye agreeably, because it is shut up 
from the common people; being kept only for a few genteel 
families in the vicinity. You know I am an enemy to mono- 
polies; wishing all Heaven's good gifts to man to be as free as 
the wind, and as universal as the sunshine. 

I like the various small gardens in New York, with their 
alcoves of lattice-work, where one can eat an ice-cream shaded 
from the sun. You have none such in Boston ; and they would 
probably be objected to, as open to the vulgar and the vicious. 
I do not walk through the world with such fear of soiling my 
garments. Let science, literature, music, flowers, all things 
that tend to cultivate the intellect, or humanize the heart, be 
open to " Tom, Dick, and Harry;" and thus, in process of time, 
they will become Mr. Thomas, Bichard, and Henry. In all 
these things, the refined should think of what they can impart, 
not of what they can receive. 

As for the vicious, they excite in me more of compassion 
than reproach. The great Searcher of Hearts alone knows 
whether I should not have been as they are, wath the same 
neglected childhood, the same vicious examples, the same 
powerful temptations of misery and want. If they will but 
pay to virtue the outward homage of decorum, God forbid 
that I should wish to exclude them from the healthful breeze, 



b LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 

and the shaded promenade. "Wretched enough are they in 
their degradation ; nor is society so guiltless of their ruin, as to 
justify any of its members in cherishing unpitying scorn. 

And this reminds me that in this vast emporium of wealth, 
poverty, and crime, there are, morally speaking, some flowery 
nooks, and " sunny spots of greenery." I used to say, I knew 
not where were the ten righteous men to save the city; but I 
have found them now. Since then, the Washington Tem- 
perance Society has been organised, and active in good works. 
Apart from the physical purity, the triumph of soul over sense, 
implied in abstinence from stimulating liquors, these societies 
have peculiarly interested me, because they are based on the 
law of love. The pure is inlaid in the holy, like a pearl set in 
fine gold. Here is no attendance upon the lobbies of legisla- 
tures, none of the bustle or manoeuvres of political party; mea- 
sures as useless in the moral world, as machines to force water 
above its level are in the ph^'sical world. Serenely above all 
these, stands this new Genius of Temperance; her trust in 
Heaven, her hold on the human heart. To the fallen and the 
perishing she throws a silken cord, and gently draws him within 
the golden circle of human brotherhood. She has learned that 
persuasion is mightier than coercion, that the voice of en- 
couragement finds an echo in the heart deeper, far deeper, than 
the thunder of reproof. 

The blessing of the perishing, and of the merciful God, who 
cares for them, will rest upon the temperance societies. A short 
time since, one of its members found an old acquaintance lying 
asleep in a dirty alley, scarcely covered with filthy rags, pinned 
and tied together. Being waked, the poor fellow exclaimed, 
in piteous tones, " Oh don't take me to the Police Police — 
please don't take me there." " Oh, no," replied the missionary 
of mercy; " you shall have shoes to your feet, and a decent 
coat on your back, and be a man again. We have better work 
for you to do than to lie in prison. You will be a temperance 
preacher yet." 

He was comfortably clothed, kindly encouraged, and employ- 
ment procured for him at the printing office of the Washington 
Society. He [Gougli] now works steadily all day, and preaches 
temperance in the evening. Every week I hear of similar 
instances. Are not these men enough to save a city 1 This 
society is one among several powerful agencies now at work, to 
teach society that it makes its own criminals, and then at pro- 



LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 7 

digious loss of time, money, and morals, punishes its own 
work. 

The other day, I stood by the wayside while the Washingtonian 
procession, two miles long, passed by. All classes and trades 
were represented, with appropriate music and banners. Troops 
of boys carried little wells and pumps; and on many of the 
banners were flowing fountains and running brooks. One 
represented a wife kneeling in gratitude for a husband restored 
to her and himself; on another, a grouj) of children were joy- 
fully embracing the knees of a reformed father. Fire companies 
were there with badges and engines; and military companies, 
with gaudy colours and tinsel trappings. Toward the close, 
came two barouches, containing the men who first started a 
temperance society on the Washingtonian plan. These six indi- 
viduals were a carpenter, a coach-maker, a tailor, a blacksmith, 
a wheelwright, and a silver-plater. They held their meetings 
in a carpenter's shop, in Baltimore, before any other person 
took an active part in the reform. My heart paid them 
reverence as they passed. It was a beautiful pageant, and but 
one thing was wanting to make it complete; there should have 
been carts drawn by garlanded oxen, filled with women and 
little children, bearing a banner, on which was inscribed, we 
ARE HAPPY now! I missed the women and the children; for 
without something to repiesent the genial influence of domestic 
life, the circle of joy and hope is ever incomplete. 

But the absent ones were present to my mind; and the 
pressure of many thoughts brought tears to my eyes. I seemed 
to see John the Baptist preparing a pathway through the 
wilderness for the coming of the Holiest; for like unto his is 
this mission of temperance. Purified senses are fitting vessels 
for pure afiections and lofty thoughts. 

AVithin the outward form I saw, as usual, spiritual significance. 
As the bodies of men were becoming weaned from stimulating 
drinks, so were their souls beginning to approach those pure 
fountains of living Avater, which refresh and strengthen, but 
never intoxicate. The music, too, was revealed to me in fulness 
of meaning. Much of it was of a military character, and 
cheered onward to combat and to victory. Eveiything about 
war I loathe and detest, except its music. My heart leaps at 
the trumpet-call, and marches with the drum. Because I can- 
not ever hate it, I know that it is the utterance of something 
good, perverted to a ministry of sin. It is the voice of resist- 



O LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 

ance to evil, of combat with the false ; therefore the brave soul 
springs forward at the warlike tone, for in it is heard a call to 
its appointed mission. Whoso does not see that genuine life is 
a battle and a march, has poorly read his origin and his destiny. 
Let the trumpet sound, and the drums roll ! Glory to resist- 
ance ! for through its agency men become angels. The instinct 
awakened by martial music is noble and true ; and therefore its 
voice will not pass away; but it will cease to represent war 
with carnal weapons, and remain a type of that spiritual combat 
with internal evils, whereby the soul is purified. It is right 
noble to fight with wickedness and wrong; the mistake is in 
supposing that spiritual evil can be overcome by physical 
weapons. 

Would that Force were banished to the unholy region 
whence it came, and that men would learn to trust more fully 
in the law of kindness. I think of this, every time I pass a 
dozing old woman, who, from time immemorial, has sat behind 
a fruit stall at the corner of St. Paul's Church. Half the time 
she is asleep, and the wonder is that any fruit remains upon 
her board; but in this wicked city very many of the boys 
deposit a cent, as they take an apple; for they have not the 
heart to wrong one who trusts them. 

A sea-captain of my acquaintance, lately returned from 
China, told me that the Americans and English were much 
more trusted by the natives, than their own countrymen; that 
the fact of belonging to those nations was generally considered 
good security in a bargain. I expressed surprise at this; not 
supposing the Yankees, or their ancestors, were peculiarly dis- 
tinguished for generosity in trade. He replied, that they were 
more so in China than at home; because, in the absence of 
adequate laws, and legal penalties, they had acquired the habit 
of trusting in each other's honour and honesty ; and this formed 
a bond so sacred, that few were willing to break it. I saw deep 
significance in the fact. 

Speaking of St. Paul's Church, near the Astor House, reminds 
me of the fault so often found by foreigners with our light grey 
stone, as a material for Gothic edifices. Though this church is 
not Gothic, I now understand why such buildings contrast dis- 
advantageously with the dark-coloured cathedrals of Europe. 
St. Paul's has lately been covered with a cement of reddish- 
brown sand. Some complain that it looks like gingerbread; 
but, for myself, I greatly like the depth of colour. Its steeple 



LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 9 

now stands relieved against the sky, with a sombre grandeur, 
which would be in admirable keeping with the massive pro- 
portions of Gothic architecture. Grey and slate colour appro- 
priately belong to lighter styles of building; applied to the- 
Gothic, they become like tragic thoughts uttered in mirthful 
tones. 

The disagreeables of New York I deliberately mean to keep 
out of sight, when I write to you. By contemplating beauty, 
the character becomes beautiful; and in this depressing and 
wearisome world, I deem it a duty to speak genial words, and 
wear cheerful looks. 

Yet, for once, I will depart from this rule to speak of the 
dog-killers. Twelve or fifteen hundred of these animals have 
been killed this summer, in the hottest of the weather, at the 
rate of three hundred a-day. The safety of the city doubtless 
requires their expulsion; but the manner of it strikes me as 
exceedingly cruel and demoralising. The poor creatures are 
knocked down on the pavement and beat to death. Whether 
brutal scenes do not prepare the minds of the young to take 
part in bloody riots and revolutions, is a serious question. 

You promised to take my letters as they happened to come 
— fanciful, gay, or serious. I am in autumnal mood to-day, 
therefore, forgive the sobriety of my strain. 



LETTER III. 

SECTARIAN WALLS — IDEAS OF GOD — THE POOR WOMAN'S GARDEN— 
THE FIVE POINTS — SOCIETY MAKES THE CRIME IT PUNISHES. 

September 2, 1841. 

Oh, these moist, sultry days of August! how oppressive they 
are to the mind and body! The sun reflected from bright red 
walls, like the shining face of a heated cook. Strange to say, 
they are painted red, blocked off" with white compartments, as 
numerous as Protestant sects, and as unlovely in their narrow- 
ness. What an expenditure for ugliness and discomfort to 
the eye ! To paint bricks their own colour, resembles the great 
outlay of time and money in many theological schools, to enable 



10 LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 

dismal, arbitrary souls to give an approved image of themselves 
in their ideas of Deity. 

After all, the God within us is the God we really believe in, 
whatever we may have learned in catechisms or creeds. 

Hence to some, the divine image presents itself habitually as 
a dark, solemn shadow, saddening the gladsomeness of earth, 
like thunder-clouds reflected on the fair mirror of the sea. To 
others, the religious sentiment is to the soul what spring is in 
the seasons, creating flowers to the eye, and music to the ear. 
In the greater proportion of minds these sentiments are mixed, 
and therefore two images are reflected, one to be worshipped 
with love, the other ^vith fear. 

Hence, in Catholic countries, you meet at one corner of the 
road frightfully painted hell-fires, into which poor struggling 
human souls are sinking; and at another, the sweet Madonna, 
with her eye of pity and her lip of love. Whenever God ap- 
pears to the eye of faith as terrible in power, and stern in 
vengeance, the soul craves some form of mediation, and thus 
satisfies its want. As the reprobate college-boy trusts to a 
mother's persuasive love to intercede for him with an angry 
father, so does the Catholic, terrified with visions of torment, 
look up trustingly to the " Blessed mother. Virgin mild." 

Not lightly, or scornfully, would I speak of any such mani- 
festations of faith, childish as they may appear to the eye of 
reason. The Jewish dispensation was announced in thunder 
and lightning; the Christian, by a chorus of love from angel 
voices. The dark shadow of the one has fearfully thrown itself 
across the mild radiance of the other. Those old superstitious 
times could not well do otherwise than mix their dim theology 
with the new-born glorious hope. Well may we rejoice that 
they could not transmit the blessed idea completely veiled in 
gloom. Since the past will overlap upon the present, and 
therefore Christianity must slowly evolve itself from Judaism, 
let us at least be thankful that, 

" From the same grim turret fell 
The shadoiv and the song.'" 

Whence came all this digression? It has as little to do with 
New York, as a seraph has to do with banks and markets. 
Yet in good truth, it all came from a painted brick w^all staring 
in at my chamber window. What a strange thing is the mind ! 
How marvellously is the infinite embodied in the smallest 
fragments of the finite ! 



LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 11 

It was ungrateful in me to complain of those walls, for I am 
more blest in my prospect than most inhabitants of cities ; even 
without allowing for the fact that more than others, I always 
see within or beyond a landscape — " a light and a revealing," 
every where. 

Opposite to me is a little patch of garden, trimly kept, and 
neatly white-washed. In the absence of rippling brooks and 
blooming laurel, I am thankful for its marigolds and poppies, 

-"side by side, 



And at each end a hollyhock, 
With an edge of London pride." 

And then between me and the sectarian brick wall, there 
are, moreover, two beautiful young trees. An Ailanthus 
twisting its arms lovingly within its smaller sister Catalpa. 
One might almost imagine them two lovely nymphs suddenly 
transformed to trees in the midst of a graceful twining dance. 
I should be half reluctant to cut a cluster of the beautiful 
crimson seed-vessels, lest I should wound the finger of some 
Hamadryad, 

** Those simple crown-twisters, 
Who of one favourite tree in some sweet spot. 
Make home and leave it not." 

But I must quit this strain ; or you will say the fair, floating 
Grecian shadow casts itself too obviously over my Christianity. 
Perchance, you will even call me " transcendental;" that being 
a word of most elastic signification, used to denote everything 
that has no name in particular, and that does not especially 
relate to pigs and poultry. 

Have patience with me, and I will come straight back from 
the Ilissus to New York — thus. 

You, too, would worship two little trees and a sunflower, if 
you had gone with me to the neighbourhood of the Five Points, 
the other day. Morally and physically, the breathing air was 
like an open tomb. How souls or bodies could live there, I 
could not imagine. If you want to see something worse than 
Hogarth's Gin Lane, go there in a warm afternoon, when the 
poor w^retches have come to what they call home, and are not 
yet driven within doors, by darkness and constables. There 
you will see nearly every form of human misery, every sign of 
human degradation. The leer of the licentious, the dull sen- 
sualism of the drunkard, the sly glance of the thief — oh, it 
made my heart ache for many a day. I regretted the errand 



12 LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 

of kindness tliat drew me there ; for it stunned my senses with 
the amount of evil, and fell upon the strong hopefulness of my 
character, like a stroke of palsy. What a place wherein to 
ask one's self, " Will the millenium ever cornel" 

And there were also multitudes of children — of little girls. 
Where were their guardian angels 1 God be praised, the wil- 
fully committed sin alone shuts out their influence ; and there- 
fore into the young child's soul angels may always enter. 

Mournfully, I looked upon these young creatures, as I said 
within myself, " And this is the education society gives her 
children — the morality of myrmidons, the charity of constables V 
Yet in the far-off future I saw a gleam. For these, too, Christ 
has died. For these was the chorus sung over the hills of 
Judea; and the heavenly music will yet find an echo deep in 
their hearts. 

It is said a spacious pond of sweet, soft water once occupied 
the place where Five Points stands. It might have furnished 
half the city with the purifying element; but it was filled up 
at incredible expense — a million loads of earth being thrown 
in, before perceivable progress was made. Now, they have to 
supply the city with water from a great distance, at a prodi- 
gious expense in conveying the Croton Water to the city. 

This is a good illustration of the policy of society toward 
crime. Thus does it choke up nature, and then seek to protect 
itself from the result, by the incalculable expense of bolts and 
bars, the gallows, watch-houses, police courts, constables, and 
" Egyptian Tombs," as they call one of the principal prisons 
here. If viewed only as a blunder, Satan might well laugh at 
the short-sightedness of the world, all the while toiling to build 
the edifice it thinks it is demolishing. Destroying violence by 
violence, cunning by cunning, is Sisyphus' work, and must be 
so to the end. Never shall we bring the angels among us, by 
" setting one devil up to knock another devil down" j as the 
old woman said in homely but expressive phrase. 



LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 13 

LETTER IV. 

HOBOKEN — WEEHAWKEN — HAMILTON'S DUEL INDIAN SARCASM. 

September 9, 1841. 

New York enjoys great privilege in facility and cheapness of 
communication with many beautiful places in the vicinity. 
For six cents one can exchange the hot and dusty city for 
Staten Island, Jersey, or Hoboken; three cents will convey 
you to Brooklyn, and twelve and a half cents pays for a most 
beautiful sail of ten miles, to Port Lee. In addition to the 
charm of rural beauty, all these places are bathed by deep 
waters. 

The Indians named the most beautiful lake of New England 
Win-ne-pe-sauk-ey (by corriiption,"VVinnepiseogee), which means 
the smile of the Great Spirit. I always think of this name, so 
expressively poetic, whenever I see sunbeams or moonbeams 
glancing on the waves. 

Because this feature is wanting in the landscape, I think our 
beautiful Massachusetts Brookline, — with its gra.ceful, feathery 
elms, its majestic old oaks, its innumerable hidden nooks of 
greenery, and Jamaica pond, that lovely, lucid mirror of the 
water nymphs — is scarcely equal to Hoboken. I saw it for the 
first time in the early verdure of spring, and under the mild 
light of a declining sun. A small open glade, with natural 
groves in the rear, and the broad river at its foot, bears the 
imposing name of Elysian Fields. The scene is one where a 
poet's disembodied spirit might be well content to wander; but, 
alas ! the city intrudes her vices into this beautiful sanctuary 
of nature. There stands a public-house, with its bar room, and 
bowling alley, a place of resort for the idle and the profligate; 
kept within the bounds of decorum, however, by the constant 
presence of respectable visitors. 

Near this house, I found two tents of Indians. These chil- 
dren of the forest, like the monks of olden time, always had a 
fine eye for the picturesque. Wherever you find a ruined 
monastery, or the remains of an Indian encampment, you may 
be sure you have discovered the loveliest site in all the sur- 
rounding landscape. 

A fat little pappoose, round as a tub, with eyes like black 



14 LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 

l^eads, attracted my attention by the comical awkwardness of 
its tumbling movements. I entered into conversation with the 
parents, and found they belonged to the remnant of the Penob- 
scot tribe. This, as Scott says, was " picking up a dropped 
stitch" in the adventures of my life. 

"Ah," said I, " I once ate supper with your tribe in a hem- 
lock forest, on the shores of the Kennebec. Is the old chief, 
Capt. Neptune, yet alive f' 

They almost clapped their hands with delight, to find one 
who remembered Capt. Neptune. I inquired for Etalexis, his 
nephew, and this was to them another familiar word, which it 
gave them joy to hear. 

Long forgotten scenes were restored to memory, and the 
images of early youth stood distinctly before me. I seemed to 
see old Neptune and his handsome nephew, a tall, athletic 
youth, of most graceful proportions. I always used to think of 
Etalexis, when I read of Benjamin West's exclamation, the 
first time he saw the Apollo Belvidere : " My God! how like a 
young Mohawk warrior!" 

But for years I had not thought of the majestic young 
Indian, until the meeting in Hoboken again brought him to 
my mind. I seemed to see him as I saw him last — the very 
dandy of his tribe — with a broad band of shining brass about 
his hat, a circle of silver on his breast, tied with scarlet rib- 
bons, and a long belt of curiously- wrought wampum hanging to 
his feet. His uncle stood quietly by, pufiing his pipe, undis- 
turbed by the consciousness of wearing a crushed hat and a 
dirty blanket. With girlish curiosity, I raised the heavy 
tassels of the wampum belt, and said playfully to the old man, 
" Why don't you wear such an one as this?" 

"What for me wear ribbons and beads'?" he replied: "Me 
no want to catch 'em squaw." 

He spoke in the slow imperturbable tone of his race; but 
there was a satirical twinkle in his small black eye, as if he had 
sufficiently learned the tricks of civilisation to enjoy mightily 
any jokes upon women. 

We purchased a basket in the Elysian Fields, as a memento 
of these ghosts of the past; preferring an unfinished one of pure 
white willow, unprofaned by daubs of red and yellow. 

Last week I again saw Hoboken in the full glory of moon- 
light. Seen thus, it is beautiful beyond imagining. The dark, 
thickly shaded groves, where flickering shadows play fantastic 



LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 15 

gambols witli the moonliglit ; the water peeping here and there 
through the foliage, like the laughing face of a friend; the 
high, steep banks, wooded down to the margin of the river; the 
deep loneliness, interrupted only by the Katy-dids; all con- 
spired to produce an impression of solemn beauty and peace. 

If you follow this path for about three miles from the land- 
ing-place, you arrive at "Weehawken; celebrated as the place 
where Hamilton fought his fatal duel with Burr, and where his 
son likewise fell in a duel the year preceding. The place is 
difficult of access; but hundreds of men and women have there 
engraven their names on a rock nearly as hard as adamant. A 
monument to Hamilton was here erected at considerable ex- 
pense ; but it became the scene of such frequent duels, that the 
gentlemen who raised it caused it to be broken into fragments; 
it is still, however, frequented for the same bad purpose. What 
a lesson to distinguished men to be careful of the moral influence 
they exert! I probably admire Hamilton with less enthusiasm 
than those who fully sympathise with his conservative tenden- 
cies; but I find so much to reverence in the character of this 
early friend of Washington, that I can never sufficiently regret 
the silly cowardice that led him into so fatal an error. Yet 
would I speak of it gently, as Pierpoint does in his political 
poem: 

" Wert thou spotless in thy exit ? Nay : 
Nor spotless is the monarch of the day. 
Still but one cloud shall o'er thy fame be cast — 
And that shall shade no action, but thy last." 

A fine statue of Hamilton was wrought by Ball Hughes, 
which, like all resemblances of him, forcibly reminded one of 
William Pitt. It was placed in the Exchange, in Wall Street, 
and was crushed into atoms by the falling in of the roof, at the 
great fire of 1835. The artist stood gazing on the scene with 
listless despair; and when this favourite production of his 
genius, on which he had bestowed the labour of two long years, 
fell beneath the ruins, he sobbed and wept like a child. 

The little spot at Weehawken, which led to this digression 
about Hamilton, is one of the last places which should be dese- 
crated by the evil passions of man. It is as lovely as a nook 
of Paradise, before Satan entered its gardens. Where the 
steep, well-wooded bank descends to the broad, bright Hudson, 
half way down is a level glade of verdant grass, completely 
embowered in foliage. The sparkling water peeps between tiu; 



15 LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 

twining boughs, like light through the rich tracery of Gothic 
windows; and the cheerful twittering of birds alone mingles 
with the measured cadence of the plashing waves. Here 
Hamilton fought his duel, just as the sun was rising : 

" Clouds slumbering at his feet, and the clear blue 
Of Summer's sky, in beauty bending o'er him — 
The city bright IdcIow ; and far away, 
Sparkling in golden light, his own romantic bay." 

" Tall spire, and glittering roof, and battlement, 
And banners floating in the sunny air. 
And white sails o'er the calm blue waters bent. 
Green isle and circling shore, all blended there, 
In wild reality." 

We descended, to return to the steamboat, by an open path 
on the river's edge. The high bank, among whose silent groves 
we had been walking, now rose above our heads in precipitous 
masses of rugged stone, here and there broken into recesses^ 
which, in the evening light, looked like darksome caverns. 
Trees bent over the very edge of the summit, and their un- 
earthed roots twisted among the rocks like huge serpents. On 
the other side lay the broad Hudson in the moonlight, its 
waves rippling up to the shore with a cool, refreshing sound. 

All else was still — still — so fearfully still, that one might 
almost count the beatings of the heart. That my heart did 
beat, I acknowledge; for here was the supposed scene of the 
Mary Kogers tragedy ; and though the recollection of her grave 
gave me no uneasiness, I could not forget that quiet, lovely 
path we were treading was near to the city, with its thousand 
hells, and frightfully easy of access. 

We spoke of the murdered girl, as we passed the beautiful 
promontory near the Sibyl's cave, where her body was found, 
lying half in and half out of the water. A few steps further 
on, we encountered the first human beings we had met during 
our long ramble — two young women, singing with a somewhat 
sad constraint, as if to keep their courage up. 

I had visited the Sibyl's cave in the day time ; and should 
have entered its dark mouth by the moonlight, had not the de- 
pressing remembrances of the city haunted me like evil spirits. 

We Americans, you know, are so fond of classic names, that 
we call a village Athens, if it has but three houses, painted red 
to blush for their own ugliness. Whence this cave derives its 
imposing title I cannot tell. It is in fact rather a pretty little 
place, cut out of soft stone, in rude imitation of a Gothic 



LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 17 

interior. A rock in the centre, scooped out like a baptismal 
font, contains a spring of cool, sweet water. The entire labour 
of cutting out this cave was performed by one poor Scotchman, 
with chisel and hammer. He worked upon it an entire year; 
and probably could not have completed it in less than six 
months, had he given every day of his time. He expected to 
derive considerable profit by selling draughts from the spring, 
and keeping a small fruit stand near it. But alas, for the 
vanity of human expectations ! a few weeks after he completed 
his laborious task, he was driven off the grounds, it is said, 
unrequited by the proprietor. 

A little before nine, we returned to the city. There was a 
strong breeze, and the boat bounded over the waves, producing 
that delightful sensation of elasticity and vigour which one 
feels when riding a free and fiery steed. The moon, obscured 
by fleecy clouds, shone with a saddened glory; rockets rose 
from Castle Garden, and dropped their blazing jewels on the 
billowy bosom of the bay; the lamps of the city gleamed in 
the distance; and with painful pity for the houseless street- 
wanderer, I gratefully remembered that one of those distant 
lights illuminated a home, where true and honest hearts were 
every ready to bid me welcome. 



LETTER V. 

HIGHLAND BENEVOLENT SOCIETY — CLANS AND SECTS. 

New York, September 16, 1841. 

Since I wrote last, I have again visited Hoboken, to see a 
band of Scotchmen in the old Highland costume. They belong 
to a Benevolent Society for the relief of indigent countrymen; 
and it is their custom to meet annually in Gaelic dress, to run, 
leap, hurl stones, and join in other Highland exercises — in fond 
remembrance of 

" The land of rock and glen, ( 

Of strath and lake, and mountain, 
And more of gifted men." 

There were but thirty or forty in number, and a very small 
proportion of them fine specimens of manhood. There was one 
young man, however, who was no bad sample of a brave young 

B 



18 LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 

chief in the olden time ; with athletic frame, frank countenance, 
bold bearing, and the bright, eager eye of one familiar with 
rugged hills and the mountain breeze. Before I was told, my 
eye singled him out, as most likely to bear away the prizes in 
the games. There was mettle in him, that in another age, and 
in another clime, would have enabled him to stand beside brave 
old Torquil of the Oak, and give the cheerful response, " Bas 
air son Eachin" (Death for Hector). 

But that age has passed, blessed be G od ; and he was nothing 
more than a handsome, vigorous Scotch emigrant, skilful in 
Highland games. 

The dresses in general, like the wardrobe of a theatre, needed 
the effect of distance to dazzle the imagination; though two or 
three of them were really elegant. Green or black velvet, 
with glittering buttons, was fitted close to the arms and waist; 
beneath which fell the tartan kilt in ample folds ; from the left 
shoulder flowed a long mantle of bright-coloured plaid, chosen 
according to the varieties of individual taste, not as distinguish- 
ing marks of ancestral clans. Their shaggy pouches, called 
sporrans, were of plush or fur. From the knee to the ankle, 
there was no other covering than the Highland buskin of 
crimson plaid. One or two had dirks, with sheaths and hilts 
beautifully embossed in silver, and ornamented with large 
crystals from Cairngorm ; St. Andrew and the thistle, ex- 
quisitely wrought on the blades of polished steel. 

These were exceptions; for, as I have said, the corps in 
general had a theatrical appearance; nor can I say they bore 
their standards, or unsheathed their claymores, with a grace 
quite sufiScient to excite my imagination. Two boys, of eight 
or ten years old, who carried the tassels of the central banner, 
in complete Highland costume, pleased me more than all the 
others; for children receive gracefulness from nature, and learn 
awkwardness of men. 

But though there were many accompaniments to render the 
scene common-place and vulgar, yet it was not without plea- 
surable excitement, slightly tinged with romance, that I fol- 
lowed them along the steep banks of Hoboken, and caught 
glimpses of them between the tangled foliage of the trees, or 
the sinuosities of rocks, almost as rugged as their own moun- 
tain-passes. Banners and mantles, which might not have 
borne too close an inspection, looked graceful as they floated 
so far beneath me; and the sound of the bagpipes struck less 



LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 19 

harshly on my ear, than when the musicians stood at my side. 
But even softened by distance, I thought the shrill wailing of 
this instrument appropriate only to Clan Chattan, whose Chief 
was called Molir ar chat, or the Great Cat. 

As a phantom of the past, this little pageant interested me 
extremely. I thought of the hatred of those fierce old clans, 
whose " blood refused to mix, even if poured into the same 
vessel." They were in the State, what sects are in the Church 
— narrow, selfish, and vindictive. 

The State has dissolved her clans, and the Church is fast 
following the good example; though there are still sectaries 
casting their shadows on the sunshine of God's earth, who, if 
they were to meet on the Devil's Bridge, as did the two old 
feudal chieftains of Scotland, would, like them, choose death 
rather than humble prostration for the safe foot-path of an 
enemy. 

Clans have forgotten old quarrels, and not only mingled 
together, but with a hostile nation. National pride and 
national glory is but a more extended clanship, destined to be 
merged in universal love for the human race. Then farewell to 
citadels and navies, tariff's and di2:)lomatists ; for the prosperity 
of each will be the prosperity of all. 

In religion, too, the spirit of extended, as well as of narrow 
clanship, will cease. Not only will Christianity forget its 
minor subdivisions, but it will itself cease to be siectarian. 
That only will be a genuine "world's convention," when Chris- 
tians, with reverent tenderness for the religious sentiment in 
every form, are willing that Mohammedans or Pagans should 
unite with them in every good work, without abstaining from 
ceremonies which to them are sacred. 

" The Turks," says Lamartine, " always manifest respect foi 
what other men venerate and adore. Whenever a Mussulman 
sees the image of God in the opinion of his fellow-creatures, he 
bows down and he respects; persuaded that the intention sanc- 
tifies the form." 

This sentiment of reverence, so universal among Moham- 
medans, and so divine in its character, might well lead Pier- 
point, when standing in the burying-ground of Constantinople, 
to ask, 

" If all that host, 
Whose turbaned marbles o'er them nod, 
Were doomed, when giving up the ghost, 
To die as those who have no God ? 



20 LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 

No, no, my God ! They worshipped Thee ; 
Then let not doubts my spirits darken. 
That Thou, who always hearest me, 
To these, thy children too, didst hearken." 

The world, regenerated and made free, will at last bid a glad" 
farewell to clans and sects'? "Would that their graves were dug 
and their requiems sung; and nothing but their standards and 
costumes left, as curious historical records of the benighted 
past. 



LETTER VI. 

THE JEWS — BLACK JEWS — OLD CLOTHES — READING BY LAMP- 
LIGHT IN THE DAY TIME. 

September 23, 1841. 

I LATELY visited the Jewish Synagogue in Crosby Street, ta 
witness the Festival of the New Year, which was observed for 
two days, by religious exercises and a general suspension of 
worldly business. The Jewish year, you are aware, begins in 
September; and they commemorate it in obedience to the fol- 
lowing text of Scripture : — " In the first day of the seventh 
month ye shall have a Sabbath, a memorial of blowing of trum- 
pets, a holy convocation. Ye shall do no servile work therein." 

It was the first time I ever entered any place of worship 
where Christ was not professedly believed in. Strange vicissi- 
tudes of circumstance, over which I had no control, have 
brought me into intimate relation with almost every form of 
Christian faith, and thereby given me the power of looking 
candidly at religious opinions from almost any point of view. 
But beyond the j)ale of the great sect of Christianity I had 
never gone; though far back in my early years, I remember an 
intense desire to be enough acquainted with some intelligent 
and sincere Mohammedan, to enable me to look at the Koran 
through his spectacles. 

The women were seated separately, in the upper part of the 
house. One of the masters of Israel came, and somewhat 
gruffly ordered me, and the young lady who accompanied me, 
to retire from the front seats of the synagogue. It was un- 
courteous; for we were very respectful and still, and not in the 



LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 21 

least disposed to intrude upon the daughters of Jacob. How- 
ever, my sense of Justice was rather gratified at being treated 
contemptuously as a Gentile and "a Nazarene;" for I remem- 
bered the contumely with which they had been treated through- 
out Christendom, and I imagined how they must feel, on 
entering a place of Christian worship, to hear us sing, 

" With hearts as hard as stubborn Jews, 
That unbelieving race." 

The effect produced on my mind, by witnessing the cere- 
monies of the Jewish Synagogue, was strange and bewildering; 
spectral and flitting; with a sort of vanishing resemblance to 
Teality ; the magic lantern of the past. 

"Veneration and ideality, you know, would have made me 
wholly a poet, had not the inconvenient size of conscientious- 
ness forced me into reforms ; between the two, I look upon the 
future with active hope, and upon the past with loving reve- 
rence. My mind was, therefore, not only unfettered by narrow 
prejudice, but solemnly impressed with recollections of those 
ancient times when the Divine Voice was heard amid the thun- 
ders of Sinai, and the Holy Presence shook the mercy-seat 
between the cherubim. I had, moreover, ever cherished a 
tenderness for 

*' Israel's wandering race, that go 
Unblest through every land ; 
Whose blood hath stained the polar snow 
And quenched the desert sand : 
Judea's homeless hearts, that turn 
From all earth's shrine to thee, 
With their lone faith for ages borne 
In sleepless memory. " 

Thus prepared, the scene would have strongly excited my 
imagination and my feelings, had there not been a hetero- 
geneous jumbling of the present with the past. There was the 
ark containing the Sacred Law, written on scrolls of vellum, 
and rolled, as in the time of Moses; but between the ark and 
the congregation, instead of the " brazen laver," wherein those 
who entered into the tabernacle were commanded to wash, was 
a common bowl and ewer of English delf, ugly enough for the 
chamber of a country tavern. All the male members of the 
congregation, even the little boys, while they were within the 
synagogue, wore fringed silk mantles, bordered with blue 
stripes; for Moses was commanded to ''Speak unto the chil- 



22 LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 

dren of Israel, and bid tliem tliat they make them fringes in 
the borders of their garments, throughout their generations, 
and that they put upon the fringe of their borders a ribbon of 
blue;" — but then these mantles were worn over modern broad- 
cloth coats, and fashionable pantaloons with straps. The priest, 
indeed, approached more nearly to the gracefulness of oriental 
costume; for he wore a full black silk robe, like those worn by 
the Episcopal clergy; but the large white silk shawl which 
shaded his forehead, and fell over his shoulders, was drawn over 
a common black hat ! Ever and anon, probably in parts of the 
ceremony deemed peculiarly sacred, he drew the shawl entirely 
over his face, as he stooped forward and laid his forehead on 
the book before him. I suppose this was done because Moses^ 
till he had done speaking to the congregation, put a veil upon, 
his fice. But through the whole, priest and people kept on 
their hats. My spirit was vexed with this incongruity. I had 
turned away from the turmoil of the present, to gaze quietly 
for a while on the grandeur of the past; and the representa- 
tives of the past walked before me, not in the graceful oriental 
turban, but the useful European hat! It broke the illusion 
completely. 

The ceremonies altogether impressed me with less solemnity 
than those of the Catholic Church; and gave me the idea of far 
less faith and earnestness in those engaged therein. However, 
some allowance must be made for this: first, because the com- 
mon bond of faith in Christ was wanting between us; and 
secondly, because all the services were performed in Hebrew, 
of which I understood not one syllable. To see mouths open 
to chant forth a series of unintelligible sounds, has the same 
kind of fantastic unreality about it that there is in witnessing 
a multitude dancing when you hear no music. But after 
making all these allowances, I could not escape the conclusion 
that the ceremonies were shuffled through in a cold, mechanical 
style. The priest often took up his watch, which lay before 
him; and assuredly this chanting of prayers "by Shewsbury 
clock" is not favourable to solemnity. 

The chanting was unmusical, consisting of monotonous ups 
and downs of the voice, which, when the whole congregation 
joined in it, sounded like the continuous roar of the sea. 

The trumpet, which was blown by a rabbi, with a shawl 
drawn over his hat and face, was of the ancient shape, some- 
what resembling a cow's horn. It did not send forth a spirit- 



LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 23 

stirring peal ; but the sound groaned and struggled through it 
— not at all reminding one of the days when 

*' There rose the choral hymn of praise, 
And ti-ump and timbrel answered keen, 
And Zion's daughters poured their lays, 
With priest and warrior's voice between." 

I observed, in the English translation on one side of an open 
prayer-book, these words : '' When the trumpet shall blow on 
the holy mountain, let all the earth hear! Let them which are 
scattered in Assyria, and perishing in Egypt, gather themselves 
together in the Holy City." I looked around upon the con- 
gregation, and I felt that Judea no longer awoke at the sound 
of the trumpet ! 

The ark, on a raised platform, was merely a kind of semi- 
circular closet, with revolving doors. It was surmounted by a 
tablet, bearing a Hebrew inscription in gilded letters. The 
doors were closed and opened at different times, with much 
ceremony; sometimes a man stood silently before them, with a 
shawl drawn over his hat and face. When opened, they re- 
vealed festoons of white silk damask, suspended over the sacred 
rolls of the Pentateuch; each roll enveloped in figured satin, 
and surmounted by ornaments with silver bells. According to 
the words of Moses, " Thou shalt put into the ark the testi- 
mony which I shall give thee." Two of these rolls were 
brought out, opened by the priest, turned round toward all the 
congregation, and after portions of them had been chanted for 
nearly two hours, were again wrapped in satin, and carried 
slowly back to the ark, in procession, the people chanting the 
Psalms of David, and the little bells tinkling as they moved. 

While they were chanting an earnest prayer for the coming 
of the Promised One, who was to restore the scattered tribes, 
I turned over the leaves, and by a singular coincidence my eye 
rested on these words: "Abraham said, see ye not the splendid 
light now shining on Mount Moriah'? And they answered, 
nothing hut caverns do we see." I thought of Jesus, and the 
whole pageant became more spectral than ever; so strangely 
vague and shadowy, that I felt as if under the influence of 
magic. 

The significant sentence reminded me of a German friend, 
who shared his sleeping apartment with another gentleman, 
and both were in the habit of walking very early in the morn- 
ing. One night, his companion rose much earlier than he 



24 LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 

intended, and perceiving his mistake, placed a lighted lamp in 
the chimney corner, that its glare might not disturb the sleeper, 
leaned his back against the fire-place, and began to read. Some 
time after, the German arose, left him reading, and walked 
forth into the morning twilight. When he returned, the sun 
was shining high up in the heavens; but his companion, uncon- 
scious of the change, was still reading by lamp-light in the 
chimney corner. And this the Jews are now doing, as well as 
a very large proportion of Christians. 

Ten days from the Feast of Trumpets comes the Feast of 
the Atonement. Five days after, the Feast of Tabernacles is 
observed for seven days. Booths of evergreen are erected in 
the synagogue, according to the injunction, " Ye shall take the 
boughs of goodly trees, branches of palm trees, and the boughs 
of thick trees, and willows of the brook; and ye shall rejoice 
before the Lord your God seven days." 

Last week, a new synagogue was consecrated in Attorney 
Street, making, I believe, five Jewish synagogues in this city, 
comprising in all about ten thousand of this ancient people. 
The congregation of the new synagogue are German emigrants, 
driven from Bavaria, the Duchy of Baden, &c., by oppressive 
laws. One of these laws forbade the Jews to marry ; and 
among the emigrants were many betrothed couples, who married 
as soon as they landed on our shores, trusting their future sup- 
port to the God of Jacob. If not as " rich as Jews," they are 
now most of them doing well in the world; and one of the first 
proofs they gave of prosperity was the erection of a place of 
worship. 

The oldest congregation of Jews in New York were called 
Shewith Israel. The Dutch governors would not allow them to 
build a place of worship; but after the English conquered the 
colony, they erected a small wooden synagogue, in Mill Street, 
near which a creek ran up from the East River, where the Jewish 
women performed their ablutions. In the course of improve- 
ment this was sold; and they erected the handsome stone build- 
ing in Crosby Street, which I visited. It is not particularly 
striking or magnificent, either in its exterior or interior; nor 
would it be in good keeping for a peoi:)le gone into captivity to 
have garments like those of Aaron, "for glory and for beauty;" 
or an " ark overlaid with pure gold within and without, and a 
crown of gold to be round about. 

There is something deeply impressive in this remnant of a 



LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 25 

scattered people coming down to us in continuous links through 
the long vista of recorded time ; preserving themselves carefully 
unmixed by intermarriage with people of other nations and 
other faith, and keeping up the ceremonial forms of Abraham, 
Isaac, and Jacob, through all the manifold changes of revolving 
generations. Moreover, our religions are connected, though 
separated; they are shadow and substance, type and fufilment. 
To the Jews only, with all their blindness and waywardness, 
was given the idea of one God, spiritual and invisible; and, 
among them only could such a one as Jesus have appeared. 
To us they have been the medium of glorious truths ; and if the 
murky shadow of their old dispensation rests too heavily on the 
m.ild beauty of the new, it is because the present can never 
quite unmoor itself from the past; and well for the world's 
safety that it is so. 

Quakers were mixed with the congregation of the Jews; 
thus oddly brought together, were representatives of the ex- 
treme of conservatism, and the extreme of innovation ! 

I was disappointed to see so large a proportion of this peculiar 
people fair-skinned and blue-eyed. As no one who marries a 
Gentile is allowed to remain in their synagogue, one would 
naturally expect to see a decided predominance of the dark eyes, 
jetty locks, and olive complexions of Palestine. But the Jews 
furnish incontrovertible evidence that colour is the eflfect of 
<jlimate. In the mountains of Bavaria they are light-haired 
and fair-skinned ; in Italy and Spain they are dark ; in Hindo- 
■stan swarthy. The Black Jews of Hindostan are said to have 
been originally African or Hindoo slaves, who received their 
freedom as soon as they became converted to Judaism, and had 
fulfilled the rites prescribed by the ceremonial law; for the 
Jews, unlike Christians, deem it unlawful to hold any one of 
their own religious faith in slavery. In another respect they 
put us to shame; for they hold a Jubilee of Freedom once in 
fifty years, and on that occasion emancipate all, even of their 
heathen slaves. 

"Whether the Black Jews — now a pretty large class in Hin- 
dostan — intermarry with other Jews, we are not informed. 
Moses, their great law-giver, married an Ethiopian. Miriam 
and Aaron were shocked at it, as they would have been at any 
intermarriage with the heathen tribes, of whatever colour. 
Whether the Ethiopian woman had adopted the faith of Israel 
is not mentioned ; but we are told that the anger of the Lord 



26 LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 

was kindled against Aaron and his sister for their conduct on 
this occasion. 

The anniversary meetings of the New York Hebrew Bene- 
volent Society present a singular combination. There meet 
together pilgrims from the Holy Land, merchants from the 
Pacific Ocean and the East Indies, exiles from the banks of the 
Vistula, the Danube, and the Dnieper, bankers from Vienna 
and Paris, and dwellers on the shores of the Hudson and the 
Susquehannah. Suspended in their dining hall, between the 
American and English flags, may be seen the banner of Judah, 
with Hebrew inscriptions in golden letters. How this stirs 
the sea of memory! That national banner has not been un- 
furled for eighteen hundred years. The last time it floated to 
the breeze was over the walls of Jerusalem, besieged by Titus 
Vespasianus. Then, our stars and stripes were not foreseen, 
even in dim shadow, by the vision of a prophet; and here they 
are intertwined together over this congress of nations ! 

In New York, as elsewhere, the vending of "old clo'" is a 
prominent occupation among the Jews; a fact in which those 
who look for spiritual correspondence can perceive significance;, 
though singularly enough Sartor Kesartus makes no allusion ta 
it in his " Philosophy of Clothes." When I hear Christian 
ministers apologising for slavery by the example of Abraham,, 
defending war, because the Lord commanded Samuel to hew 
Agag in pieces, and sustaining capital punishment by the re- 
taliatory code of Moses, it seems to me it would be most aj^pro- 
priate to have the Jewish criers at the doors of our theological 
schools, proclaiming at the top of their lungs, " Old Clothes ! 
Old Clothes! Old Clothes all the way from Judea!" 

The proverbial worldliness of the Jews, their unpoetic avoca- 
tions, their modern costume, and mechanical mode of perpetu- 
ating ancient forms, cannot divest them of a sacred and even 
romantic interest. The religious idea transmitted by this re- 
markable people, has given them a more abiding and extended 
influence on the world's history than Greece attained by her 
classic beauty, or Pome by her triumphant arms. .Mohamme- 
danism and Christianity, the two forms of theology which in- 
clude nearly all the civilised world, both grew from the stock 
planted by Abraham's children. On them lingers the long- 
reflected light of prophecy; and we, as well as they are watch- 
ing for its fulfilment. And, verily, all things seem tending 
towards it. Through all their wanderings, they have followed 



LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 27 

the direction of Moses, to be lenders and not horrmvers. The 
sovereigns of Europe and Asia, and the republics of America, 
are their debtors, to an immense amount. The Kothschikls are 
Jews, and they have wealth enough to purchase all Palestine 
if they choose ; a large part of Jerusalem is in fact mortgaged 
to them. The oppressions of the Turkish government, and the 
incursions of hostile tribes, have hitherto rendered Syria an 
unsafe residence ; but the Sultan has erected it into an inde- 
pendent power, and issued orders throughout his empire that 
the Jews shall be as j)erfectly protected in their religious and 
civil rights as any other class of his subjects ; moreover, the 
present controversy between European nations and the East 
seems likely to result in placing Syria under the protection of 
Christian nations. It is reported that Prince Metternich, 
Premier of Austria, has determined, if possible, to constitute a 
Christian kingdom out of Palestine, of which Jerusalem is to 
be the seat of government. The Pussian Jews, who number 
about 2,000,000, have been reduced to the most abject condition 
by contempt and tyranny; but there, too, government is now 
commencing a movement in their favour, without requiring 
them to renounce their faith. As long ago as 1817, important 
privileges were conferred by law on those Jews who consented 
to embrace Christianity. Land was gratuitously bestowed upon 
them, -where they settled, under the name of the Society of 
Israelitish Christians. 

The signs of the times cannot, of course, escape the obser- 
vation, or elude the active zeal, of Christians of the present 
day. England has established many missions for the conver- 
sion of the Jews. The Presbyterian Church of Scotland has 
lately addressed a letter of sympathy and expostulation to the 
scattered children of Israel, which has been printed in a great 
variety of Oriental and Occidental languages. In Upper 
Canada, a Society of Jews converted to Christianity, have been 
organised to facilitate the return of the wandering tribes to 
the Holy Land. 

The Rev. Solomon Michael Alexander, a learned Eabbi, of 
the tribe of Judah, has been proselyted to Christianity, and 
sent to Palestine by the Church of England; being consecrated 
the first Bishop of Jerusalem. 

Moreover, the spirit of schism appears among them. A 
numerous and influential body in England have seceded, under 
the name of Reformed Jews. They denounce the Talmud as a. 



'28 LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 

inass of absurdities, and adhere exclusively to the authority of 
Moses ; whereas, orthodox Jews consider the rabbinical writings 
-of equal authority with the Pentateuch. They have sent a 
Hebrew circular to the Jews of this country, warning them 
against the seceders. A General Convention is likewise pro- 
posed, to enable them to draw closer the bonds of union. 

What a busy, restless age is this in which we are cast ! 
What a difficult task for Israel to walk through its midst, with 
■mantles untouched by the Gentiles. 

*' And hath she wandered thus in vain, 

A pilgrim of the past ? 
No ! long deferred her hope hath been, 

But it shall come at last ; 
Tor in her wastes a voice I hear, 

As from some prophet's urn, 
It bids the nations build not there, 

For Jacob shall return. " 



LETTER YII. 

HEV. JOHN SUMMERFIELD — THE FARMER CRAZED BY SPECULATORS 
GREENWOOD CEMETERY WEARING MOURNING. 

September 30, 1841. 

A FEW days since, I crossed the East river to Brooklyn, on 
Long Island; named by the Dutch, Breuck-len, or the Broken- 
land. Brooklyn Heights, famous in revolutionary history, 
command a magniiicent view of the city of New York, the 
neighbouring islands, and harbour ; and being at least a hundred 
feet above the river, and open to the sea; they are never with- 
out a refreshing and invigorating breeze. A few years ago, 
these salubrious heights might have been purchased by the city 
at a very low price, and converted into a promenade, of beauty 
unrivalled throughout the world; but speculators have now laid 
hands upon them, and they are digging them away to make 
room for stores, with convenient landings from the river. In 
this process, they not unfrequently turn out the bones of 
soldiers, buried there during the battles and skirmishes of the 
revolution. 

We turned aside to look in upon the small, neat burying- 



LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 29 

ground of the Methodist Church, where lie the bones of that 
remarkable young man, the Kev. John Summerfield. In the 
course of so short a life, few have been able to impress them- 
selves so deeply and vividly on the memory of a thousand 
hearts, as this eloquent disciple of Christ. None who heard 
the fervid outpourings of his gifted soul could ever forget him. 
His grave is marked by a horizontal marble slab, on which is 
inscribed a well written epitaph. The commencement of it is 
the most striking : 

"Rev. John Summerfield. Born in England; born again in 
Ireland. By the first, a child of genius; by the second, a 
child of God. Called to preach at 19 ; died at 27." 

Dwellings w^ere scattered around this little burying-ground, 
separated by no fences, their thresholds divided from the graves 
only by a narrow foot-path. I was anxious to know what 
might be the efiect on the spiritual character of children, ac- 
customed to look out continually upon these marble slabs, tc 
play among the grassy mounds, and perchance to " take theij 
little porringer, and eat their supper there." 

About two miles from the ferry, we came to the marshy 
village of Gowannus, and crossed the mill-pond. A farm near 
by furnishes a painful illustration of the unwholesome excite- 
ment attendant upon speculation. Here dwelt an honest, 
ignorant, peaceful, old man, who inherited from his father a 
farm of little value. Its produce was, however, enough to 
supply his moderate wants; and he took great pleasure in a 
small, neatly kept flower garden, from which he was ever ready 
to gather a bouquet for travellers. Thus quietly lived the old- 
fashioned farmer and his family, and thus they might have 
gone home to their fathers, had not a band of speculators fore- 
seen that the rapidly increasing city would soon take in 
Brooklyn, and stretch itself across the marshes of Gowannus. 
Full of these visions, they called upon the old man, and 
offered him XI 4,500 for a farm which had, originally, been 
bought almost for a song. £2,500, in silver and gold, were 
placed on the table before him; he looked at them, fingered 
them over, seemed bewildered, and agreed to give a decisive 
answer on the morrow. The next morning found him a raving 
maniac ! And thus he now roams about, recklessly tearing up 
the flowers he once loved so dearly, and keeping his family in 
continual terror. 

On the high ground, back of this marsh, is Greenwood 



30 LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 

Cemetery, the object of our pilgrimage. The site is chosen 
with admirable taste. The grounds, beautifully diversified 
with hill and valley, are nearly covered with a noble old forest, 
from which it takes its cheerful name of the Green Wood. 

The area of two hundred acres comprises a greater variety of 
undulating surface than Mount Auburn, and I think excels it 
in natural beauty. From embowered glades and deej)ly shaded 
dells, you rise in some places twenty feet, and in others more 
than two hundred, above the sea. Mount Washington, the 
highest and most remarkable of these elevations, is two hundred 
and sixteen feet high. The scenery here is of picturesque and 
resplendent beauty; comprising an admirable view of New 
York; the shores of North and East Kiver, sprinkled with 
villages; Staten Island, that lovely gem of the waters; the 
entire harbour, white with the sails of a hundred ships ; and 
the margin of the Atlantic, stretching from Sandy Hook 
beyond the Kockaway Pavilion. A magnificent monument to 
Washington is to be erected here. 

Thence we rambled along, through innumerable sinuosities, 
until we came to a quiet little lake, which bears the pretty 
name of Sylvan Water. Fish abound here, undisturbed ; and 
shrubs in their wild, natural state, bend over the margin to 
dip their feet and wash their faces. 

•' Here come the little gentle birds, 
Without a fear of ill, 
Down to the murnmring water's edge, 
And freely drink their fill." 

As a gun is never allowed to enter the premises, the playful 
squirrels, at will, "drop down from the leafy tree," and the air 
of spring is redolent with woodland melody. 

An hour's wandering brought us round to the same place 
again; for here, as at Mount Auburn, it is exceedingly easy 
for the traveller to lose his way in labyrinthine mazes. 

*' The wandering paths that wind and creep, 

Now o'er the mountain's rugged brow, 
And now where sylvan waters sleep 

In quiet beauty, far below ; 
Those paths which many a lengthened mile 

Diverge, then meet, then part once more, 
Like those which erst in Greta's isle, 

Were trod by fabled Minotaur." 

Except the beautiful adaptation of the roads and paths to 
.the undulating nature of the ground, art has yet done but little 



LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 31 

for Greenwood. It is said the company that purchased it for 
a cemetery, will have the good taste to leave the grounds as 
nearly as possible in a state of nature. But as funds are 
increased by the sale of burying lots, the entire precincts will 
be enclosed within terrace-walls, a handsome gate-way and 
chapel will be erected, and a variety of public monuments. 
The few private monuments now there, are mostly of Egyptian 
model, with nothing remarkable in their appearance. 

On this spot was fought the bloody battle of Long Island. 

" Each wood, each hill, each glen, 
Lives in the record of those days 

Which 'tried the souls of men.' 
This fairy scene, so quiet now, 
Where murmuring winds breathe soft and low, 

And bright birds carol sweet, 
Once heard the ringing clash of steel, 
The shout, the shriek, the volley'd peal. 

The rush of flying feet ! " 

When the plan was first suggested of finding some quiet, 
sequestered place, for a portion of the innumerable dead of this 
great city, many were very urgent to have it called The 
Necropolis, meaning the City of the Dead ; but Cemetery was 
more wisely chosen ; for the old Greeks signified thereby The 
Place of Sleep. We still need a word of Christian significance, 
imj^lying, " They are not here ; they have risen." I should 
love to see this cheerful motto over the gateway. 

The increase of beautiful burial-grounds, like Mount Auburn 
and Greenwood, is a good sign. Blessed be all agencies that 
bring our thoughts into pleasant companionship with those 
who have " ended their pilgrimage and begun their life.'" 
Banished for ever be the sable garments, the funeral pall, the 
dismal, unshaded ground. If we must attend to a change ot 
garments, while our hearts are full of sorrow, let us wear sky- 
blue, like the Turks, to remind us of heaven. The horror and 
the gloom, with which we surround death, indicates too surely 
our want of living faith in the soul's immortality. Deeply and 
seriously impressed we must needs be, whenever called to con- 
template the mysterious close of " our hood-winked march from 
we know not whence, to we know not whither;" but terror 
and gloom ill become the disciples of Him, who asked with 
such cheerful significance, " Why seek ye the living among the 
dead?" 

I rejoice greatly to observe that these ideas are gaining 



32 LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 

ground in tlie community. Individuals of all sects, and in 
many cases entire churches, are abjuring the custom of wearing 
mourning; and Protestant Christendom is fast converting its 
dismal barricaded burial grounds into open, flowery walks. 
The Catholics have always done so. I know not whether the 
intercession of saints, and long continued masses for the dead 
bring their imaginations into more frequent and nearer com 
munion with the departed; but for some reason or other, they 
keep more bright, than w^e do, the link between those who are 
living here, and those who live beyond. Hence, their tombs 
are constantly supplied with garlands by the hand of affection ; 
and the innocent babe lying uncoffined on its bier in the open 
church, with fragrant flowers in its little hand, and the mellow 
light from painted windows resting on its sweet uncovered 
face. Great is the power of faith and love ! 



LETTER VIII. 

THE SHIPPING — THE YANKEE BOY AND THE EMPEROR OF RUSSIA- 
THE KAMSCHATKA AND LA BELLE POULE. 

October 7, 1841. 

Among the many objects of interest in this great city, a stranger 
cannot overlook its shipping, especially as New York lays claim 
to superiority over other cities of the Union, in the construction 
of vessels which are remarkable for beauty of model, elegance 
of finish, and gracefulness of sparring. 

I have often anathematised the spirit of trade, which reigns 
triumphant, not only on 'Change, but in our halls of legislation, 
and even in our churches. Thought is sold under the hammer, 
and sentiment, in its holiest forms, stands labelled for the 
market. Love is offered to the highest bidder, and sixpences 
are given to purchase religion for starving souls. 

In view of these things, I sometimes ask whether the age of 
commerce is better than the age of war 1 Whether our " mer- 
chant princes" are a great advance upon feudal chieftains? 
Whether it is better for the many to be prostrated by force, or 
devoured by cunning? To the imagination, those bloody old 



LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 33 

barons seem the nobler of the two ; for it is more manly to hunt 
a lion than entrap a fox. But reason acknowledges that mer- 
chandise, with all its cunning and its fraud, is a step forward 
in the slow march of human improvement; and hope announces, 
in proi:)hetic tones, that commerce will yet fulfil its highest 
mission, and encircle the world in a golden band of brotherhood. 

You will not think this millenium so nigh, when I tell you 
that the most graceful, fairy-like vessel in these waters was a 
slaver! She floated like a sea-nymph, and cut the waters like 
an arrow. I mean the Baltimore clipper, called the Catherine ; 
taken by British cruisers, and brought here, with all her de- 
testable appurtenances of chains and padlocks, to be adjudged 
by the United States' Court, condemned, and sold. For what 
purpose she is now used, I know not ; but no doubt this city is 
secretly much involved in the slave trade. 

At the Navy Yard, Brooklyn I saw the ship of war Inde- 
pendence, which carried out Mr. Dallas and his family, when 
he went ambassador to Bussia. On their arrival at Cronstadt, 
they observed a barge, containing sixteen of the emperor's state- 
officers, put off" from a steam-boat near by, and row towards 
them. They came on board, leaving behind them the bargemen, 
and a tall, fine-looking man at the helm. While the officers 
were in the cabin partaking refreshments and exchanging 
courtesies, the helmsman leaped on board, and made himself, 
"hail fellow, well met" with the sailors, accepting quids of 
tobacco, and asking various questions. When the officers re- 
turned on deck, and he had resumed his place, one of the 
sailors said to his comrade, with a knowing look, " I tell you 
what, Tom, that 'ere chap's more than we take him for. He's 
a land-luhher, I can tell you. Old Neptune never had the 
dipping of him.'' 

An officer of the Independence overheard these remarks, and 
whispered to CoDimodore Nicholson that he shrewdly suspected 
the tall, plainly-dressed helmsman, was the Emperor Nicholas, 
in disguise; for he was said to be fond of playing such pranks. 
A royal salute, forty-two guns, was immediately ordered. The 
helmsman was observed to count the guns; and after twenty- 
one (the common salute) had been fired, he took off his cap and 
bowed. The Bussian steamer instantly ran up the imperial 
flag; all the forts, and every ship in the harbour, commenced a 
tremendous cannonading; rending the air, as when from "crag 
to crag leaps the live thunder." 

D 



34 LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 

In courteous acknowledgment of his discovered disguise, tlie 
officers of the Independence were invited to make the palace 
their home, during their stay at St. Petersburg, and the 
Emperor's carriages, horses, and aids, were at their service; a 
compliment never before paid to a vessel of any nation. 

Yet was similar honour once conferred on an uncouth 
country boy from New England! The following is the sub- 
stance of the story, as told by Mr. Dallas, at a public dinner 
given him in Philadelphia, on his return from Russia, in 1838. 

One day a lad, apparently about nineteen, presented himself 
before our ambassador at St. Petersburg. He was a pure 
specimen of the genus Yankee; with sleeves too short for his 
bony arms, trousers half way up to his knees, and hands play- 
ing with coppers and ten-penny nails in his pocket. He intro- 
duced himself by saying, "I've just come out here to trade, 
with a few Yankee notions, and I want to get sight of the 
Emj^eror." 

"Why do you wish to see him?" 

"I've brought him a present, all the way from Ameriky. I 
respect him considerable, and I want to get at him, to give it 
to him with my own hands." 

Mr. Dallas smiled, as he answered, "It is such a common 
thing, my lad, to make crowned heads a present, expecting 
something handsome in return, that I'm afraid the Emperor 
will consider this only a Yankee trick. What have yon 
brought 1" 

"An acorn." 

"An acorn! what under the sun induced you to bring the 
Emperor of Russia an acorn?" 

"Why, jest before I sailed, mother and I went on to Wash- 
ington to see about a pension; and when we was there, we 
thought we'd jest step over to Mount Vernon. I picked up 
this acorn there; and I thought to myself I'd bring it to the 
Emperor. Thinks, says I, he must have heard a considerable 
deal about our General Washington, and I expect he must 
admire our institutions. So now you see I've brought it, and 
I want to get at him." 

"My lad, it's not an easy matter for a stranger to approach 
the Emperor; and I am afraid he will take no notice of your 
present. You had better keep it." 

"I tell you I want to have a talk with him. I expect I can 
tell him a thing or two about Ameriky. I guess he'd like 



LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 35 

mighty well to liear about our railroads, and our free schools, 
and what a big swell our steamers cut. And when he hears 
how well our people are getting on, may be it will put him up 
to doing something. The long and the short on't is, I shan't 
be easy till I get a talk with the Emperor; and I should like 
to see his wife and children. I want to see how such folks 
bring up a family." 

"Well, sir, since you are so determined upon it, I will do 
what I can for yon — but you must expect to be disappointed. 
Though it will be rather an unusual proceeding, T would advise 
you to call on the vice-chancellor, and state your wishes; he 
may possibly assist you." 

"Well, that's all I want of you. I will call again, and let 
you know how I get on." 

In two or three days, he again appeared, and said, "Well, 
I've seen the Emperor, and had a talk with him. He's a real 
gentleman, I can tell you. When I gave him the acorn, he 
said he should set a great store by it; that there was no 
character in ancient or modern history he admired so much as 
he did our Washington. He said he'd plant it in his palace 
garden with his own hand; and he did do it — for I see him 
with my own eyes. He wanted to ask me so much about our 
schools and railroads, and one thing or another, that he invited 
me to come again, and see his daughters; for he said his wife 
could speak better English than he could. So I went again, 
yesterday; and she's a fine, knowing woman, I tell you; and 
his daughters are nice gals." 

'•'What did the Empress say to you'?" 

"Oh, she asked me a sight o' questions. Don't you think, 
she thought we had no servants in Ameriky! I told her poor 
folks did their own work, but rich folks had plenty of servants. 
' But then you don't call 'em servants,' said she ; ' you call 'em 
help.' I guess, ma'am, you've been reading Mrs. Trollope? 
says I. We had that ere book aboard our sliij). The Emperor 
clapped his hands, and laughed as if he'd kill himself. ' You're 
right, sir,' said he, ' you're right. We sent for an English copy, 
and she's been reading it this very morning!' Then I told 
him all I knew about our country, and he was mightily pleased. 
He wanted to know how long I expected to stay in these parts. 
I told him I'd sold all the notions I brought over, and I 
guessed I should go back in the same ship. I bid 'em good 
bye, all round, and went about my business. Ain't I had a 



36 LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 

glorious time'? I expect you didn't calculate to see me run 
such a rig?" 

"No, indeed, I did not, my lad. You may well consider 
yourself lucky; for it's a very uncommon thing for crowned 
heads to treat a stranger with so much distinction." 

A few days after he called again, and said, "I suess I shall 
stay here a spell longer, I'm treated so well. T'other day a 
grand officer come to my room, and told me the Emperor had 
sent him to show me all the curiosities; and I dressed myself, 
and he took me with him, in a mighty fine carriage, with four 
horses; and I've been to the theatre and the museum; and I 
expect I've seen about all there is to be seen in St. Petersburg. 
What do you think of that, Mr. Dallas 1" 

It seemed so incredible that a poor, ungainly Yankee lad 
should be thus loaded with attentions, that the ambassador 
scarcely knew what to think or say. 

In a short time, his strange visitor re-appeared, "Well," 
said he, "I made up my mind to go home; so I went to thank 
the Emperor, and bid him good bye. I thought I couldn't do 
no less, he'd been so civil. Says he, "Is there anything else 
you'd like to see, before you go back to Ameriky?" I told him 
I should like to get a peep at Moscow; for I'd heard con- 
siderable about their setting fire to the Kremlin, and I'd read 
a deal about General Bonaparte; but it would cost a sight o^ 
money to go there, and I wanted to carry my earnings to 
mother. So I bid him good-bye, and come off. Now what do 
you guess he did, next morning? I vow, he sent the same man 
in regimentals, to carry me to Moscow in one of his own 
carriages, and bring me back again, when I've seen all I want 
to see! And we're going to-morrow morning, Mr. Dallas. 
What do you think now?" 

And sure enough, the next morning the Yankee boy passed 
the ambassador's house in a splendid coach and four, waving 
his handkerchief, and shouting, "Good bye! Good bye!" 

Mr. Dallas afterwards learned from the Emperor that all the 
particulars related by this adventurous youth were strictly 
true. He again heard from him at Moscow, waited uj)on by 
the public officers, and treated with as much attention as is 
usually bestowed on ambassadors. 

The last tidings of him reported that he was travelling in 
Circassia, and writing a journal, which he intended to pub- 
lish. 



LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 37 

Now, who but a Yankee could have done all that? 

While speaking of the Emperor, I must not forget the 
magnificent steam frigate Kamschatka, built here to his order. 
Her model, drafted by Captain Von Shantz, of the Kussian 
navy, is extremely beautiful. She sits on the water as grace- 
fully as a swan ; and it is said her speed is not equalled by any 
sea-steamer on the Atlantic or Pacific, the Black Sea, the Indian, 
or the Baltic. It is su2:»posed she could easily make the 
passage from here to England in ten days. The elegance of 
her rigging, and her neat, nimble wheels have been particularly 
admired. These wheels are constructed on a new plan, and 
though apparently slight, have great strength and power. Her 
engines are of six hundred horse power, and her tonnage about 
two thousand. 

All the metal about her is American. In machinery and 
construction she carries two hundred thousand pounds of copper, 
fifty thousand of wrought iron, and three hundred thousand of 
cast iron. Two hundred and fifty men were eight months em- 
ployed in building her. Her cabins are said to be magnificent. 
Two drawing-rooms are fitted up in princely style for the 
imperial family; the wood- work of these consists of mahogany, 
bird's-eye maple, rose-wood, and satin-wood. Her hull is 
entirely black; the bows and stern surmounted with a large 
double-headed gilt eagle, and a crown. The machinery, made 
by Messrs. Dunham & Co. of this city, is said to be of the 
most suj)erb workmanship ever produced in this country. She 
is considered a remarkably cheap vessel of the kind, as she cost 
only four hundred thousand dollars. She was built under the 
superintendence of Mr. Scott, who goes in her to Russia, as 
chief engineer. She sailed for Cronstadt last week, being escort- 
ed out of the harbour by a large party of ladies and gentlemen. 
Among these was Mr. Bhoades, of New York, the naval con- 
structor. You probably recollect that he built a large gun-ship 
for the Turkish Sultan; who was so much delighted when he 
saw the noble vessel launched right royally upon the waves, 
that he jumped and capered, and threw his arms about the 
ship-builder's neck, and gave him a golden box, set with 
splendid jewels. Henry Eckford, too, one of the most re- 
markable of marine architects, was of New York. He built 
the Kensington for the Greeks, and died prematurely while in 
the employ of Mahmoud. It is singular, is it not, that foreign 
powers send to this young country, when they most want 



38 LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 

ingenious machinery, or skilful workmanship ? But I will 
quit this strain, lest I fall into our national sin of boasting. 

I cannot bid you farewell without mentioning the French 
frigate La Belle Poule, commanded by the Prince de Joinville, 
son of Louis Philippe. She is an interesting object seen from 
the Battery, with her tri-colour flying; for one seems to see 
rich sarcophagus, with its magnificent pall of black velvet, 
sprinkled with silver stars, in which she conveyed the remains 
of Napoleon from St. Helena to Paris. Every day, masses 
were said, and requiems sung on board, for the soul of the 
great departed. Do not quarrel with the phrase. In its high- 
est significance it is ill applied to any warrior; but, never- 
theless, in the strong will, successfully enforced, there is ever 
an element of greatness. 

The same unrivalled band that attended the imperial remains 
are now on board, and sometimes refresh our citizens with 
most enchanting music. They are twenty-six in number, paid 
from the Prince's ow^n purse. 

Sabbath before last, a youth of fourteen, much beloved, died 
on board, far from home and kindred. It was an impressive 
sight to see the coffin of the young stranger passing through our 
streets, covered with the tri-coloured flag, suspended upon 
ropes, after the manner of marine burials in Europe, and borne 
by his mourning comrades. 

The Prince's private state-room contains a bronze copy of the 
Joan of Arc, which was exquisitely sculptured by his sister, 
Marie, who had great genius for the fine arts, and was richly 
endowed with intellect. In the same room are miniatures of 
his royal parents, by the celebrated Madame de Mirbel, and 
some very spirited sketches by his own hand. It is worthy of 
remark, that the only royal family eminently distinguished for 
private virtues, combined with a high degree of intellectual 
cultivation, were not educated to be princes ; and that their 
father had acquired wisdom and strength in the school of severe 
adversity. 

The keeper of Castle Garden, when he saw me watching the 
barge that came from the Belle Poule, repeated, at least, half- 
a-dozen times, that I should not know the Prince from any 
other man, if I were to see him. I was amused to hear him 
thus betray the state of his own mind, though he failed to en- 
lighten mine. 

I love to linger about the Battery at sunset ; to see the flags 



LETTERS FROBI NEW YORK. 39 

all drop down suddenly from the mast-head, in honour of tlie 
retreating king of day ; and to hear, in the stillness of evening, 
some far-off song upon the waters, or the deep, solemn sound, 
''All's well!" echoed from one to another of those numerous 
ships, all lying there so hushed and motionless. A thousand 
thoughts crowd upon my mind, as I silently gaze on their 
twinkling light, and shadowy rigging, dimly relieved against 
the sky. I think of the human hearts imprisoned there ; of 
the poor sailor's toil and suffering ; of his repressed affections, 
and benighted mind ; and in that one idea of life spent without 
a home, I find condensed all that my nature most shudders at. 
I think, too, of the poor fugitive slave, hunted out by mercenary 
agents, chained on ship-board, and perchance looking up, deso- 
late and heart-broken, to the same stars on which I fix my free 
and happy gaze. Alas, how fearfully solemn must their light 
be to him, in his hopeless sorrow, and superstitious ignorance. 



LETTEE IX. 

GRANT THORBURN, THE ORIGINAL OF GALT's LAWRIE TODD — 

KAVENSWOOD. 

October 14, 1841. 

Last week we went to Kavenswood, to visit Grant Thorburn's 
famous garden. "We left the city by Hellgate, a name not 
altogether inappropriate for an entrance to New York. The 
waters, though troubled and peevish, were more composed than 
I. had expected. This was owing to the high tide; and it re- 
minded me of Washington Irving's description ; " Hell-gate is 
as pacific at low water as any other stream ; as the tide rises, 
it begins to fret ; at half tide it rages and roars, as if bellowing 
for more water ; but when the tide is full, it relapses again into 
quiet, and for a time seems to sleep almost as soundly as an 
alderman after dinner. It may be compared to an inveterate 
drinker, who is a peaceful fellow enough when he has no liquor 
at all, or when he is skin-full ; but when half-seas over, plays 
the very devil." One of the steam-ferry boats that crosses this 
turbulent passage, is appropriately called the Pluto. It is odd 
that men should have confounded together the deities that 
preside over riches and over hell, and that the god of commerce 



40 LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 

should likewise be the god of lies. Perhaps the ancients had 
sarcastic significance in this. 

The garden at Ravenswood is well worth seeing. An ad- 
mirable green-house, full of choice plants ; extensive and varied 
walks, neatly kept ; and nearly three thousand dahlias in full 
bloom — the choicest specimens, with every variety of shade and 
hue ; and a catalogue of great names from Lord Wellington to 
Kate Nickleby and Grace Darling. I never saw any floral ex- 
hibition more superb. They stood facing each other in regal 
groups, as if the court beauties of a coronation ball had been 
suddenly changed into blossoms by an enchanter's wand. The 
location of the garden is beautiful ; in some places opening 
upon pretty rural scenes of wood and pasture, and fronting on 
the broad blue river, where, ever and anon, may be seen, 
through the intervening foliage, some little boat, or sloop, with 
snowy sail, gliding gracefully along in silence and sunlight. 

Grant Thorburn, you know, of course — that little " spunk o' 
geni in a rickety tabernacle," on whose history Gait built his 
Lawrie Todd. The story derived small aid from fiction ; the 
first volume being almost literally Grant Thorburn's history, as 
he tells it himself To be sure, he never j)ushed into the 
wilderness, to lay out " Judiville," or any other new town. 
Though Ravenswood has grown up around him, and the taste- 
ful name of his own choosing, he never could have endured 
many of the hardships of a pioneer ; for the village lies on the 
east river, a little south of Hallet's Cove, not more than five 
miles from the city. The name came from the Bride of Lam- 
mermoor ; for though a strict adherent of Scotland's kirk, he is 
a great admirer of Sir Walter's romances. The pleasant old 
gentleman returned in the boat with us, and was highly com- 
municative : for, in the first place, he loves to talk of himself 
and his adventures, with the innocent and inoffensive egotism 
of a little child ; and in the next place, he favours Boston 
ladies, having a pleased recollection of the great attention paid 
him there. He told us he was born near St. Leonard's Crags, 
and in his boyhood was accustomed to pass Jeanie Deans's 
cottage frequently. His grandfather was alive and stirring at 
the time of the Porteous Mob, and he had heard him recount 
the leading incidents in the heart of Mid-Lothian a thousand 
times. I was charmed to hear him recite, in the pure Scotch 
accent, Jeanie's eloquent and jDathetic appeal to the Queen. 
Speaking of Scott's fidelity to the national character, I asked 



LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 41 

him if he had not often met with a Dandie Dinraont ; he re- 
plied, " Yes, and with Dumbiedikes too ; but much oftener 
with a ' douce Davie Deans.' " 

Lawrie Todd is very true to the life ; yet it is slightly em- 
bellished with fictitious garniture, like a veritable portrait in 
masquerade dress. The old gentleman's love of matter of fVict 
led him to publish a biographical sketch of himself; which, so 
far as it goes, is almost in the identical language used by Gait ; 
both being in fact the very words, in which he has been long 
accustomed to repeat his story. Another motive for giving an 
unadorned account of himself in his little book, probably, was 
the very natural and not unpleasing propensity of an old man, 
to trace step by step the adventures and efforts whereby he 
fashioned such a flowery fortune from the barren sands. 

The handsome country-seats of himself and son, standing 
side by side in the midst of this spacious and beautiful garden ; 
urns supported by Cupids, (which they say in Yankee land 
should be called cupidities ;) and oriental glimpses here and 
there, of some verdant mound among the winding walks, sur- 
mounted by the tufted Sago Palm, or spreading Cactus, all this 
contrasted oddly enough with his own account of himself, as a 
diminutive Scotch lad with "brief legs and shuffling feet," 
.squatted down on the deck of the emigrant ship, which brought 
him here, poor and friendless, in 1794. He thus describes 
himself, helping the coloured cook to prepare dinner, when they 
first drew near the wharves of New York. " I sat down with 
Cato, as he was called, square on the deck, his feet against my 
feet, with a wooden bowl of potatoes between our legs, and 
began to scrape off the skins. While thus employed, a boat 
came alongside with several visitors. One inquired for a 
farmer's servant, wishing to engage one ; another for a house- 
maid ; and the third, thanks be and praise ! asked if there was 
a nailmaker on board. My greedy ear snapped the word, and 
looking up, I answered, ' I am one.' ' You !' replied he, look- 
ing do^vn as if I was a fairy ; ' You ! can you make nails ? ' 
* I'll wager a sixpence,' (all I had) was my answer, ' that I'll 
make more nails in one day than any man in America.' This 
reply, the manner of it, and the figure of the bragger, set all 
present into a roar of laughter." 

A curious sample of Scotch thrift was shown when he first 
opened a little shop, without capital to buy stock. Brick bats, 
covered with ironmonger's paper, with a knife or fork tied on 



42 LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 

the outside, were ranged on the shelves, like an imposing array 
of new cutlery ; and a dozen snuff boxes, or shaving boxes, 
made a great show, fastened on round junks of wood. 

" But, although, it must be allowed that this was a clever 
and innocent artifice," says Lawrie Todd, " yet, like other 
dealers in the devices of cunning, I had not been circumspect 
at all points ; for by mistake, I happened to tie a round shaving 
box on a brick subterfuge, which a sly, pawky old Scotchman, 
who sometimes stepped in for a crack, observed. 

" 'Ay, man,' says he, ' but ye hae unco' queer things here. 
"Wha ever saw a four-corner't shaving boxl' — Whereupon we 
had a hearty good laugh. ' Od,' he resumed, ' but ye're an 
auld farrant chappy, and nae doot but ye'll do weel in this 
country, where pawkrie is no' an ill nest-egg to begin with.'" 

There is, however, no " pawkrie " about his flowers and 
garden-seeds ; they are genuine, and the best of their kind ; as 
their celebrity throughout the country abundantly testifies. 

I begged of the gardener a single sprig of acacia, whose light, 
feathery, yellow foliage looked like a pet plaything of the 
breezes, and which for the first time enabled me to understand 
clearly Moore's poetic description of the Desert, where " The 
Acacia waves her yellow hair." 

I likewise took with me a geranium leaf, as a memento of 
the rose-geranium which Grant Thorburn accidentally bought 
in the day of small beginnings, and which proved the nucleus 
of his present floral fame and blooming fortune. Qlie gardener 
likewise presented us with a bouquet of dahlias, magnificent 
enough for the hand-screen of a Sultana ; but this politeness I 
think we owed to certain beautiful young ladies who accom- 
panied us. 

Altogether, it was a charming excursion ; and I came away 
pleased with the garden and its environs, and pleased with the 
old gentleman, whose dwarf-like figure disappointed me agree- 
ably ; for, from his own description, I was prepared to find 
him ungainly and mis-shapen. I no longer deem it so very 
marvellous that his Kebecca should have preferred the poor 
canny little Scotchman to her rich New York lover. 

As I never deserved to be called " Mrs. Leo Hunter," you 
will, perhaps, be surprised at the degree of interest I express 
in this man, whose claims to distinction are merely the having 
amassed wealth by his own industry and shrewdness, and 
having his adventures told by Gait's facetious pen. The accu- 



LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 43- 

mulation of dollars and cents, I grant, is a form of power the 
least attractive of any to the imagination ; but yet, as an indi- 
cation of ability of some sort, it is attractive to a degree ; and, 
moreover, there is something in mere success which interests 
us — because it is a stimulus which the human mind spontan- 
eously seeks, and without which it cannot long retain its 
energies. Added to this, there is a roseate gleam of romance 
resting on the shrewd Scotchman's life. First, there is a sober 
sentiment, a quaint, homely pathos which wraps the memory 
of his patient, quiet Rebecca in a sacred veil of tender rever- 
ence. Secondly, he is a sort of high priest of Flora ; and 
thouijh not such an one as would have been chosen to tend the 
shrine of her Roman temple, yet this will give him a poetic 
claim upon my interest, so long as the absorbing love of beauty 
renders a flower merchant more attractive to my fancy than a 
dealer in grain. 

Were I not afraid of wearying your patience with descrip- 
tions of scenery, I would talk of the steamboat passage from 
Ravenswood ; for, indeed, it is very beautiful. But I forbear 
all allusion to the gliding boats, the vernal forests, falling in 
love with their own shadows in the river, and the cosy cottages, 
peeping out from the foliage with their pleasant, friendly faces. 
I have placed the lovely landscape in the halls of memory, 
where I can look upon it whenever my soul needs the boun- 
teous refreshings of nature. I congratulate myself for having 
added this picture to my gallery as a blessing for the weary 
months that are coming upon us ; for summer has waved her 
last farewell, as she passed away over the summit of the sunlit 
hills, and I can already spy the waving white locks of old win- 
ter, as he comes hobbling up before the gale on the other side. 
I could forgive him the ague fit he bestows on poor summer as 
she hurries by ; but the plague of it is, he will stand gossiping 
with spring's green fairy till every tooth chatters in her sweet 
little head. 

Now, of a truth, my friend, I have been meaning to write 
sober sense ; but what is written, is written. As the boy said 
of his whistling, " It did itself." I would gladly have shown 
more practical good sense, and talked wisely on "the spirit of 
the age," '' progress of the species," and the like ; but I believe, 
in my soul, fairies keep carnival all the year round in my poor 
brain ; for even when I first wake, I find a magic ring of tinted 
mushrooms to show where their midnight dance has been. But 



44 LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 

I did not bore you witli scenery, and you ought to give me 
credit for that ; we who live cooped up in cities are so apt to 
forget that anybody but ourselves ever sees blue sky enough 
for a suit of bed curtains, or buttercups and greensw^ard suffi- 
cient for a flowered coverlet. " Don't crow till you're out of 
the wood," though j for the aforesaid picture hangs in the hall, 
and I may yet draw aside the curtain and give you a peep, if 
you are very curious. Real pictures, like everything else real, 
cannot be bought with cash. Old Mammon buys nothing but 
shadows. My gallery beats that of the Duke of Devonshire ; 
for it is filled with originals by the oldest masters, and not a 
copy among them all ; and better still, the sherifi" cannot seize 
them, let him do his worst ; others may prove property in the 
same, but they lie safely beyond the reach of trover or replevin. 

As we ]3assed BlackwelFs Island, I looked with thoughtful 
sadness on the handsome stone edifice erected there for a lunatic 
asylum. On another part of the island is a penitentiary ; like- 
wise a noble building, though chilling the heart with its barred 
doors and grated windows. The morally and the intellectually 
insane — should they not both be treated with great tenderness 1 
It is a question for serious thought ; and phrenology, with all 
its absurd quackery, will yet aid mankind in giving the fitting 
answer. There has, at least, been kindness evinced in the 
location chosen ; for if free breezes, beautiful expanse of v/ater, 
quiet, rural scenery, and " the blue sky that bends o'er all," 
can " minister to the mind diseased," then surely these forlorn 
outcasts of society may here find God's best physicians for their 
shattered nerves. 

Another object which interested me exceedingly was the 
Long-Island Farm School, for foundlings and orphans. Six or 
eight himdred children are here carefully tended by a matron 
and her assistants, until they are old enough to go out to ser- 
vice or trades. Their extensive play-ground runs along the 
shore ; a place of as sweet natural infiuences as could well be 
desired. I thought of the squalid little wretches I had seen at 
Five Points, whose greatest misfortune was that they were not 
orphans. I thought of the crowd of sickly infants in Boston 
alms-house — the innocent victims of hereditary vice. And my 
heart ached that I could see no end to all this misery, though 
it heard it in the far-off* voice of prophecy. 



LETTERS FKOM NEW YORK. 45 



LETTEK X. 

VARIETIES OF CHARACTER AND CHANGING POPULATION OF NEW 

YORK ANECDOTE OF ABSENT MEN THE BAGPIPE PLAYER 

BURIAL OF A STRANGER IN THE WESTERN FOREST. 



October 21, 1841. 



In a great metropolis like this, nothing is more observable 
than the infinite varieties of character. Almost without effort 
one may find himself, in the course of a few days, beside the 
Catholic kneeling before the cross, the Mahommedan bowing 
to the east, the Jew veiled before the ark of the testimony, the 
Baptist walking into the water, the Quaker keeping his head 
covered in the presence of dignitaries and solemnities of all 
sorts, and the Mormon quoting from the Golden Book which 
he has never seen. 

More, joerhaps, than any other city, except Paris or New 
Orleans, this is a place of rapid fluctuation and never-ceasing 
change. A large portion of the population are like mute actors, 
who tramp across the stage in pantomime or pageant, and are 
seen no more. The enterprising, the curious, the reckless, and 
the criminal flock hither from all quarters of the world, as to a 
common centre whence they can diverge at pleasure. Where 
men are little known they are imperfectly restrained ; there- 
fore, great numbers here live with somewhat of that wild 
license which prevails in times of pestilence. Life is a reckless 
game, and death is a business transaction. Warehouses of 
ready-made cofiins stand beside warehouses of ready-made 
clothing, and the shroud is sold with spangled opera-dresses. 
Nay, you may chance to see exposed at sherifif's sales, in public 
squares, piles of coffins, like nests of boxes, one within another, 
with a hole bored in the topmost lid to sustain the red flag of 
the auctioneer, who stands by, describing their conveniences 
and merits with all the exaggerating eloquence of his tricky 
trade. 

There is something impressive, even to painfulness, in this 
dense crowding of human existence, this mercantile familiarity 
with death. It has sometimes forced upon me, for a few mo- 
ments, an appalling night-mare sensation of vanishing identity; 
as if I were but an unknown, unnoticed, and unseparated drop 
in the great ocean of human existence ; as if the uncomfortable- 



46 LETTEES FROM NEW YORK. 

old theory were true, and we were but portions of a great mun- 
dane soul, to which we ultimately return to be swallowed up 
in its infinity. But such ideas I expel at once like phantasms 
of evil, which indeed they are. Unprofitable to all, they have 
a peculiarly bewildering and oppressive power over a mind con- 
stituted like my own — so prone to eager questioning of the 
infinite, and curious search into the invisible. I find it wiser 
to forbear inflating this balloon of thought, lest it roll me away 
through unlimited space, until I become like the absent man 
who put his clothes in bed and hung himself over the chair ; or 
like his twin-brother, who laid his candle on the pillow and 
blew himself out. 

You will, at least, my dear friend, give these letters the 
credit of being utterly unpremeditated ; for Flibbertigibbet 
himself never moved with more unexpected and incoherent 
variety. I have wandered almost as far from my starting point 
as Saturn's ring is from Mercury ; but I will return to the 
varieties in New York. Among them, I often meet a tall 
Scotsman, with sandy hair and high cheek bones — a regular 
Sawney, with tartan plaid and bagpipe. And where do you 
guess he most frequently plies his poetic trade ? Why, in the 
slaughter-houses ! of which a hundred or more send forth their 
polluted breath into the atmosphere of this swarming city hive ! 
There, if you are curious to witness incongruities, you may 
almost any day see grunting pigs or bleating lambs with throats 
cut to the tune of Highland Mary, or Bonnie Doon, or Locha- 
ber no more. 

Among those who have flitted across my path in this thorough- 
fare of nations, few have interested me more strongly than an 
old sea-captain, who needed only Sir Walter's education, his 
wild excursions through solitary dells and rugged mountain- 
passes, and his familiarity with legendary lore, to make him, 
too, a poet and a romancer. Untutored as he was, a rough son 
of the ocean, he had combined in his character the rarest ele- 
ments of fun and pathos; side by side, they glanced through 
his conversation, in a manner almost Shaks^^earean. They 
shone, likewise, in his weather-beaten countenance; for he had 
" the eye of Wordsworth and the mouth of Moliere." 

One of his numerous stories particularly impressed my im- 
agination, and remains there like a cabinet picture, by Claude. 
He said he was once on board a steam-boat, full of poor 
foreigners, going up the Mississippi to some place of destination 



LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 47 

in the yet unsettled wilderness. The room where these poor 
emigrants were huddled together, was miserable enough. In 
one corner, two dissipated-looking fellows were squatted on the 
floor, playing all-fours with dirty cards ; in another, lay a victim 
of intemperance, senseless, with a bottle in his hand ; in another, 
a young Englishman, dying of consumption — kindly tended by 
a venerable Swiss emigrant, with his helpful wife, and artless 
daughter. The Englishman was an intelligent, well-informed 
young man, who, being unable to marry the object of his choice, 
with any chance of comfortable support in his own country, 
had come to prepare a home for his beloved in the Eldorado of 
the West. A neglected cold brought on lung fever, which left, 
him in a rapid decline ; but still, full of hope, he was pushing 
on for the township, where he had planned for himself a 
domestic paradise. He was now among strangers, and felt 
that death was nigh. The Swiss emigrants treated him with 
that thoughtful, zealous tenderness, which springs from genial 
hearts, deeply imbued with the religious sentiment. One wish 
of his soul they could not gratify, by reason of their ignorance. 
Being too weak to hold a pen, he earnestly desired to dictate 
to some one else a letter to his mother and his betrothed. This, 
Captain T. readily consented to do ; and promised, so far as in 
him lay, to carry into effect any arrangements he might wish 
to make. 

Soon after this melancholy duty was fulfilled, the young 
sufferer departed. When the steam-boat arrived at its final 
destination, the kind-hearted Captain T. made the best arrange- 
ments he could for a decent burial. There was no chaplain on 
board ; and, unused as he was to the performance of religious 
ceremonies, he himself read the funeral service from a book of 
Common Prayer, found in the young stranger's trunk. The 
body was tenderly placed on a board, and carried out, face 
upwards, into the silent solitude of the primeval forest. The 
sun, verging to the west, cast oblique glances through the 
foliage, and played on the pale face in flickering light and 
shadow. Even the most dissipated of the emigrants were 
sobered by a scene so touching and so solemn, and all followed 
reverently in procession. Having dug the grave, they laid him 
carefully within, and replaced the sods above him ; then, sadly 
and thoughtfully, they returned slowly to the boat. 

Subdued to tender melancholy by the scene he had wit- 
nessed, and the unusual service he had performed. Captain T. 



48 LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 

avoided company, and wandered off alone into the woods. 
Unquiet questionings, and far-reaching thoughts of God and 
immortality, lifted his soul towards the Eternal ; and heedless 
of his footsteps, he lost his way in the windings of the forest. 
A widely devious and circuitous route, brought him within 
sound of human voices. It was a gushing melody, taking its 
rest in sweetest cadences. With pleased surj)rise, he followed 
it, and came suddenly and unexpectedly in view of the new- 
made grave. The kindly Swiss matron, and her innocent 
daughter, had woven a large and beautiful cross, from the broad 
leaves of the papaw tree, and twined it with the pure white 
blossoms of the trailing convolvulus. They had placed it 
reverently at the head of the stranger's grave, and kneeling 
before it, chanted their evening hymn to the Virgin. A glow- 
ing twilight shed its rosy flush on the consecrated symbol, and 
the modest, friendly faces of those humble worshippers. Thus 
beautifully they paid their tribute of respect to the unknown 
one, of another faith, and a foreign clime, who had left home 
and kindred, to die among strangers in the wilderness. 

How would the holy gracefulness of this scene have melted 
the heart of his mother and his beloved ! 

I had many more things to say to you ; but I will leave 
them unsaid. I leave you alone with this sweet picture, that, 
your memory may consecrate it as mine has done. 



LETTER XI. 

THE COLOURED METHODIST PREACHER — STORY OF ZEEK, THE 

SHREWD SLAVE. 

December 9, 1841. 

A FRIEND passing by the Methodist church in Elizabeth 
Street, heard such loud and earnest noises issuing therefrom, 
that he stepped in to ascertain the cause. A coloured woman 
was preaching to a full audience, and in a manner so remark- 
able that his attention was at once riveted. The account he 
gave excited my curiosity, and I sought an interview wth the 
woman, whom I ascertained to be Julia Pell, of Philadelphia. 
I learned from her that her father was one of the innumerable 
tribe of fugitives from slavery, assisted by that indefatigable 



LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 49 

friend of the oppressed, Isaac T. Hopper. This was quite a 
pleasant surprise to the benevolent old gentleman, for he was 
not aware that any of Zeek's descendants were living ; and it 
was highly interesting to him to find one of them in the person 
of this female Whitfield. Julia never knew her father by the 
name of Zeek ; for that was his appellation in slavery, and she 
had only known him as a freeman. Zeek, it seems, had been 
^' sold running," as the term is ; that is, a purchaser had given 
a very small part of his original value, taking the risk of not 
catching him. In Philadelphia, a coloured man, named Samuel 
Johnson, heard a gentleman making inquiries concerning a 
slave called Zeek, whom he had "bought running." "I know 
him very well," said Samuel; "as well as I do myself; he's a 
good-for-nothing chap ; and you'll be better without him than 
with him." "Do you think so?" " Yes, if you gave what 
you say for him ; it was a bite — that's all. He's a lazy, good- 
for-nothing dog ; and you'd better sell your right in him the 
first chance you get." After some further talk, Samuel ac- 
knowledged that Zeek was his brother. The gentleman ad- 
vised him to buy him ; but Samuel protested that he was such 
a lazy, vicious dog, that he wanted nothing to do with him. 
The gentleman began to have so bad an opinion of his bargain, 
that he ofiered to sell the fugitive for sixty dollars. Samuel, 
with great apparent indifierence, accepted the terms, and the 
necessary papers were drawn. Isaac T. Hopper was in the 
room during the whole transaction ; and the coloured man re- 
quested him to examine the papers to see that all was right. 
Being assured that every thing was in due form, he inquired, 
"And is Zeek now freeT' " Yes, entirely free." "Suppose 
I was Zeek, and that was the man that bought me ; couldn't 
he take me 1 " " Not any more than he could take me," said 
Isaac. As soon as Samuel received this assurance, he made a 
low bow to the gentleman, and, with additional fun in a face 
always roguish, said, "Your servant, sir; I am Zeek." The 
roguishness characteristic of her father is reflected in some de- 
gree in Julia's intelligent face ; but imagination, uncultivated, 
3^et highly poetic, is her leading characteristic. 

Some have the idea that our destiny is prophesied in early 
presentiments ; thus, Hannah More, when a little child, used 
to play, " go up to London and see the bishops " — an object 
for which she afterwards sacrificed a large portion of her own 
moral independence and freedom of thought. In Julia Pell's 

E 



50 LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 

case, " coming events cast their shadows before." I asked her 
when she thought she first " experienced religion." She replied, 
" When I was a little girl, father and mother used to go away 
to meeting on Sundays, and leave me and my brothers at home 
all day. So, I thought I'd hold class-meetings, as the Metho- 
dists did. The children all round in the neighbourhood used 
to come to hear me preach. The neighbours complained that 
we made such a noise, shouting and singing ; and every Mon- 
day father gave us a whipping. At last he said to mother, 
' I'm tired of beating these poor children every week to satisfy 
our neighbours. I'll send for my sister to come, and she will 
stay at home on Sundays and keep them out of mischief.' So 
my aunt was brought to take care of us ; and the next Sunday, 
when the children came thronging to hear me preach, they 
were greatly disappointed indeed to hear me say, in a mournful 
way, * We can't have any more meetings now ; because aunt's 
come, and she won't let us.' When my aunt heard this, she 
seemed to pity me and the children ; and she said if we would 
get through before the folks came home, we might hold a 
meeting ; for she should like to see for herself what it was we 
did that made such a fuss among the neighbours. Then we 
had a grand meeting. My aunt's heart was taken hold of that 
very day ; and when we all began to sing, ' Come to the 
Saviour, poor sinner, come !' she cried, and I cried; and when 
we had done crying, the whole of us broke out singing, ' Come 
to the Saviour.' That very instant I felt my heart leap up, as 
if a great load had been taken right ofi* it ! That was the be- 
ginning of my getting religion ; and for many years after that, I 
saw all the time a blue smoke rising before my eyes — the whole 
time a blue smoke, rising, rising. " As she spoke, she imitated the 
ascent of smoke, by a graceful undulating motion of her hand. 

" What do you suppose was the meaning of the blue smoke ?" 
said I. 

" I don't know, indeed, ma'am ; but I always supposed it 
was my sins rising before me from the bottomless pit." 

She told me that when her mother died, some years after, 
she called her to her bed-side, and said, " Julia, the work of 
grace has only begun in you. You haven't got religion yet. 
When you can freely forgive all your enemies, and love to do 
them good, then you may know that the true work is com- 
pleted within you." I thought the wisest schools of theology 
could not have established a better test. 



LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 51 

I asked Julia if she had ever tried to learn to read. She 
replied, " Yes, ma'am, I tried once ; because I thought it would 
be such a convenience, if I could read the Bible for myself. I 
made good progress, and in a short time could spell B-a-k-e-r 
as well as anybody. But it dragged my mind down. It 
dragged it down. When I tried to think, every thing scattered 
away like smoke, and I could do nothing but spell. Once I 
got up in an evening meeting to speak ; and when I wanted to 
say, ' Behold the days come,' I began, ' B-a — .' I was dread- 
fully ashamed, and concluded I'd give up trying to learn to 
read." 

These, and several other particulars I learned of Julia, at 
the house of Isaac T. Hopper. When about to leave us, she 
said she felt moved to pray. Accordingly, we all remained in 
silence, while she poured forth a brief, but very impressive 
prayer for her venerable host ; of whom she spoke as " that 
good old man, whom thou, O Lord, hast raised up to do such a 
blessed work for my down -trodden people." 

Julia's quiet, dignified, and even lady-like deportment in the 
parlour, did not seem at all in keeping with what I had been 
told of her in the pulpit, Avith a voice like a sailor at mast- 
head, and muscular action like Garrick in Mad Tom. On the 
Sunday following, I went to hear her for myself ; and in good 
truth, I consider the event as an era in my life never to be for- 
gotten. Such an odd jumbling together of all sorts of things 
in Scripture, such wild fancies, beautiful, sublime, or grotesque, 
such vehemence of gesture, such dramatic attitudes, I never 
before heard and witnessed. I verily thought she would have 
leaped over the pulpit ; and if she had, I was almost prepared 
to have seen her poise herself on unseen wings, above the won- 
derinsc consfreiration. 

I know not whether her dress was of her own choosing ; but 
it was tastefully appropriate. A black silk gown, with plain, 
white cufi's ; a white muslin kerchief, folded neatly over the 
the breast, and crossed by a broad black scarf, like that which 
bishops wear over the surplice. 

She began with great moderation, gradually rising in her 
tones until she arrived at the shouting pitch, common with 
Methodists. This she sustained for an incredible time without 
taking breath, and with a huskiness of effort that produced a 
painful sympathy in my own lungs. Imagine the following 
thus uttered ; that is, spoken without punctuation, " Silence 



52 LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 

in Heaven ! The Lord said to Gabriel, Bid all the angels keep 
silence. Go up into the third heavens, and tell the archangels 
to hush their golden harps. Let the mountains be filled with 
silence. Let the sea stop its roaring, and the earth be still. 
What's the matter nowl Why, man has sinned, and who shall 
save him 1 Let there be silence, while God makes search for 
a Messiah. Go down to the earth ; make haste, Gabriel, and 
inquire if any there are worthy; and Gabriel returned and 
said, No, not One. Go search among the angels, Gabriel, and 
inquire if any there are worthy ; make haste, Gabriel ; and 
Gabriel returned and said, No, not one. But don't be dis- 
couraged. Don't be discouraged, fellovr sinners. God arose 
in his majesty, and he pointed to his own right hand, and said 
to Gabriel, Behold ! the Lion of the tribe of Judah ; he alone 
is worthy. He shall redeem my people." 

You will observe it was purely her own idea, that silence 
reigned on earth and in heaven while search was made for a 
Messiah. It was a beautifully poetic conception, not unworthy 
of Milton. 

Her description of the resurrection and the day of judgment 
must have been terrific to most of her audience, and was highly 
exciting even to me, whose religious sympathies could never be 
roused by fear. Her figure looked strangely fantastic, and even 
supernatural, as she loomed up above the pulpit to represent 
the spirits rising from their graves. So powerful was her rude 
eloquence that it continually impressed me with grandeur, and 
once only excited a smile ; that was when she described a saint 
striving to rise, " buried perhaps twenty feet deep, with three 
or four sinners a-top of him." 

This reminded me of a verse in Dr. Nettleton's Tillage 
Hymns : — 

' ' Oh, how the resurrection light, 
Will darlfj/ believers' sight, 
How joyful will the saints arise, 
And r«6 the dust from off their eyes." 

With a power of imagination singularly strong and vivid, 
she described the resurrection of a young girl who had died a 
sinner. Her body came from the grave, and her soul from the 
pit, where it had been tormented for many years. " The guilty 
spirit came up with the flames all around it — rolling — rolling — 
rolling." She suited the action to the word, as Siddons herself 
might have done. Then she described the body wailing and 



LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 53 

shrieking, " O Lord ! must I take that ghost again 1 Must I 
be tormented with that burning ghost for ever?" 

Luckily for the excited feelings of her audience, she changed 
the scene, and brought before us the gospel ship, laden with 
saints, and bound for the heavenly shore. The majestic motion 
of a vessel on the heaving sea, and the fluttering of its pennon 
in the breeze, w^as imitated with wild gracefulness by the 
motion of her hands. " It touched the strand. ! it was a 
pretty morning ! and at the first tap of Heaven's bell, the 
angels came crowding round, to bid them welcome. There 
you and I shall meet, my beloved fellow-travellers. Farewell 
— farewell — I have it in my temporal feelings that I shall 
never set foot in this New York again. Farewell on earth, 
but I shall meet you there," pointing reverently upward. 
" May we all be aboard that blessed ship." Shouts throughout 
the audience, " We will ! We will ! " Stirred by such responses, 
Julia broke out with redoubled fervour. '' Farewell — farewell. 
Let the world say what they will of me, I shall surely meet you 
in Heaven's broad bay. Hell clutched me, but it hadn't energy 
enough to hold me. Farewell on earth. I shall meet you in 
the morning." Again and again she tossed her arms abroad, 
and uttered her wild " farewell ;" resjDonded to by the loud 
farewell of a whole congregation, like the shouts of an excited 
populace. Her last words were the poetic phrase,''/ shall 
Qiieet you in the tnorning .^" 

Her audience wejre wrought up to the highest pitch of en- 
thusiasm I ever witnessed. " That's God's truth !" " Glory !" 
"Amen!" "Hallelujah!" resounded throughout the cro^vded 
house. Emotion vented itself in murmuring, stamping, shout- 
ing, singing, and wailing. It was like the uproar of a sea 
lashed by the winds. 

You know that religion has always come to me in stillness ; 
and that the machinery of theological excitement has ever been 
as powerless over my soul, as would be the exorcisms of a 
Avizard. You are likewise aware of my tendency to generalise; 
to look at truth as universal, not merely in its particular rela- 
tions ; to observe human nature as a whole, and not in frag- 
ments. This propensity, greatly strengthened by the education 
of circumstances, has taught me to look calmly on all forms of 
religious opinion — not with indifference, or the scorn of unbe- 
lief, but with a friendly wish to discover everywhere the great 
central ideas common to all religious souls, though often 



54 LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 

re-appearing in the strangest disguises, and lisping or jabbering 
in the most untranshitable tones. 

Yet combined as my religious character is, of quiet mysticism 
and the coolest rationality, will you believe me, I could scarcely 
refrain from shouting, Hurra ! for that heaven-bound ship ; and 
the tears rolled down my cheeks as that dusky priestess of 
eloquence reiterated her wild and solemn farewell. 

If she gained such power over my spirit, there is no cause to 
marvel at the tremendous excitement throughout an audience 
so ignorant, and so keenly susceptible to outward impressions. 
I knew not how the high-wrought enthusiasm would be let 
down in safety. The shouts died away, and returned in shrill 
fragments of echoes, like the trembling vibrations of a harp 
swept with a strong hand, to the powerful music of a war-song. 
Had I remembered a lively Methodist tune, as well as I recol- 
lected the words, I should have broke forth : — 

' ' The gospel ship is saiHng by ! 
The Ark of safety now is nigh, 
Come, smners, unto Jesus fly, 
Improve the day of grace. 
Oh, there'll be glory, hallelujah, 
When we arrive at home !" 

The same instinct that guided me impelled the audience to 
seek rest in music for their panting S2oirits and quivering 
nerves. All joined spontaneously in singing an old familiar 
tune, more quiet than the bounding, billowy tones of my fa\'- 
ourite Gospel Ship. Blessings on music ! Like a gurgling- 
brook to feverish lips are sweet sounds to the heated and weary 
soul. 

Everybody round me could sing; and the tones were soft and 
melodious. The gift of song is universal with Africans; and 
the fact is a prophetic one. Sculpture blossomed into its 
fullest perfection in a physical age, on which dawned the intel- 
lectual; painting blossomed in an intellectual age, warmed by 
the rising sun of moral sentiment ; and now music goes forward 
to its culmination in the coming spiritual age. Now is the 
time that Ethiopia begins "to stretch forth her hands." Her 
soul, so long silenced, will yet utter itself in music's highest 
harmony. 

When the audience paused, Mr. Matthews, their pastor, rose 
to address them. He is a religious-minded man, to whose good 
influence Julia owes, under God, her present state of mind. 



LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 55 

She always calls him '' father/' and speaks of him with the 
most affectionate and grateful reverence. At one period of her 
life, it seems that she was led astray by temptations, which 
peculiarly infest the path of coloured women in large cities ; 
but ever since her " conversion to God," she has been strictly 
exemplary in her walk and conversation. In her own expres- 
sive language, " Hell clutched her, but hadn't energy enough to 
hold her." The missteps of her youth are now eagerly recalled 
by those who love to stir polluted waters; and they are brought 
forward as reasons why she ought not to be allowed to preach. 
I was surprised to learn that to this prejudice was added an- 
other, against women's preaching. This seemed a strange idea 
for Methodists, some of whose brightest ornaments have been 
women preachers. As far back as Adam Clarke's time, his 
objections were met by the answer, " If an ass reproved Balaam, 
and a harn-dooi' fowl reproved Peter, why shouldn't a woman 
reprove sin?" 

This classification with donkeys and fowls is certainly not 
very complimentary. The first comparison I heard most wit- 
tily replied to, by a coloured woman who had once been a slave. 
"Maybe a speaking woman is like an ass," said she; "but I 
can tell you one thing — the ass saw the angel, when Balaam 
didn't." 

Father Matthews, after apologising for various misquotations 
of Scripture, on the ground of Julia's inability to read, added : 
" But the Lord has evidently called this woman to a great work. 
He has made her mighty to the salvation of many souls, as a 
cloud of witnesses can testify. Some say she ought not to 
preach, because she is a woman. But I say, ' Let the Lord 
send by whom he icill send.' Let everybody that has a mess- 
age, deliver it — whether man or woman white or coloured ! 
Some say women musn't preach, because they were first in the 
transgression; but it seems to me hard that if they helped us 
into sin, they shouldn't be suffered to help us out. I say, * Let 
the Lord send by whom he will send;' and my pulpit shall be 
always open." 

Thus did the good man instil a free principle into those un- 
educated minds, like gleams of light through chinks in a prison- 
wall. Who can foretell its manifold and ever-increasing results 
in the history of that long-crippled race % Yerily great is the 
advent of a. true idea, made manifest to men ; and great are the 
miracles it works — making the blind to see, and the lame to walk. 



56 LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 



LETTER XII. 

THE NEW YEAR — PAST AND FUTURE — MUSIC WRITTEN ON SAND BY 
VIBRATION — CAUTION TO REFORMERS. 

January 1, 1842. 
I WISH you a happy New- Year. A year of brave conflict 
with evil, within and without — a year of sinless victories. 
Would that some fairy, whose word fulfils itself in fate, would 
wish me such a year ! Yet scarcely are the words written, 
when I fall to pitying myself, in view of the active images they 
have conjured up; and my soul turns, with wistful gaze, towards 
the green pastures and still waters of spiritual quietude and 
poetic ease. Yet, were the aforesaid fairy standing before me, 
ready to grant whatsoever I might ask, I think I should have 
strength enough to choose a year of conflict for the good of my 
race ; but it should be warfare without j)oisoned arrows, and 
fought on the broad table-land of high mountains, never de- 
scending into the narrow by-paths of personal controversy, or 
chasing its foe through the crooked lanes of policy. In all ages 
of the world, truth has sufiered much at the hands of her dis- 
ciples, because they have been ever tempted to use the weapons 
her antagonists have chosen. Let us learn wisdom by the past. 
The warnings that sigh through experience, and the hope that 
smiles through prophecy, both have power to strengthen us. 

The past and the future ! how vast is the sound, how infinite 
the significance ! Hast thou well considered the fact, that all 
the past is reproduced in thee, and all the future prophesied 1 
Had not Pharaoh's daughter saved the Hebrew babe, and 
brought him up in all the learning of the Egyptians ; had not 
Plato's soul uttered itself in harmony with the great choral 
hymn of the universe; had not Judean shepherds listened in 
the deep stillness of moonlight on the mountains to angels 
chanting forth the primal notes whence all music flows — wor- 
ship, peace, and love ; had any one of these been silent, wouldst 
thou have been what thou art "? Nay, thou wouldst have been 
altogether another; unable even to comprehend thy present self. 
Had Christianity remained in dens and caves, instead of cloth- 
ing itself in outward symbols of grandeur and of beauty; had 
cathedrals never risen in towered state, 

' ' And over hill and dell 
Gone sounding with a royal voice 
The stately minster bell; " 



LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 57 

had William the Norman never divided Saxon lands by force, 
and then united his new piratical state in solemn marriage with 
the Church ; had Luther never thrown his inkstand at the devil, 
and hit him hard ; had Bishop Laud never driven heretics by 
fire and faggot to the rocky shores of New England; had 
William Penn taken ofi" his hat to the Duke of York — would 
thy present self have been known to thyself, couldst thou have 
seen its features in a mirror ? 

Nay, verily. Thou art made up of all that has preceded thee; 
and thus was thy being j^redestined. And because it is thus 
in the inward spirit, it is so in the outward world. Our very 
shawls bear ornaments found in Egyptian catacombs, and our 
sofas rest on the mysterious Sphinx ; Caryatides, which upheld 
the roof of Diana's ancient temple, stand with the same quiet 
and graceful majesty to sustain the lighter burden of our can- 
delabras and lamps ; and the water of modern wells flows into 
vases, whose beautiful forms were dug from the lava of long- 
buried Herculaneum. 

Truth is immortal. No frascment of it ever dies. From 
time to time the body dies off it ; but it rises in a more perfect 
form, leaving its grave-clothes behind it, to be, perchance, wor- 
shipped as living things by those who love to watch among the 
tombs. Every line of beauty is the expression of a thought, 
and shares the immortality of its origin ; hence the beautiful 
acanthus leaf is transferred from Corinthian capitals to Parisian 
scarfs and English calicoes. 

It is said that the bow of a violin drawn across the edge of a 
glass covered with sand leaves notes of music written on the 
sand. Thus do the vibrations of the present leave its tune 
engraven on the soul ; and in the lapse of time, we call those 
written notes the language of the past. Thus art thou the 
child of the past and the father of the future. Thou standest 
on the present " like the sea-bird on a rock in mid ocean, with 
the immensity of waters behind him, ready to plunge into the 
immensity of waters before him." 

Art thou a reformer 1 Beware of the dangers of thy position. 
Let not the din of the noisy present drown the music of the past. 
Be assured there is no tone comes to thee from the far-off ocean 
of olden time which is not a chord in the eternal anthem of the 
universe ; else had it been drowned in the roaring waves long 
before it came to thee. 

Beform as thou wilt, for the present and the future have 



58 LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 

need of this ; but let no rude scorn breathe on the past. Lay 
thy head lovingly in her lap, and let the glance of her eye pass 
into thine ; for she has been to thee a mother. 

" I can scorn nothing which a nation's heart 
Hath held for ages holy : for the heart 
Is alike holy in its strength and weakness ; 
It ought not to be jested with nor scorned. 
All things to me are sacred that have been. 
And though earth like a river streaked with blood, 
Which tells a long and silent tale of death. 
May blush her history and hide her eyes. 
The past is sacred — it is God's, not ours ; 
Let her and us do better if we can." 

At no season does the thoughtful soul so much realise that 
it ever stands "between two infinities" — never does it so dis- 
tinctly recognise the j)resence of vast ideas that look before and 
after, as when the Old Year turns away its familar face and 
goes olST to join its veiled sisterhood beyond the flood. It is 
true that every day ends a year, and that which precedes our 
birth-day does, in an especial manner, end our year; yet is there 
something peculiarly impressive in that epoch, which whole 
nations recognise as a foot-print of departing time. 

The season itself has a wailing voice. The very sky in 
spring-time laughingly says, "How do you do"?" but in winter 
it looks a mute farewell. " The year is dying away," says 
Goethe, " like the sound of bells. The wind j^asses over the 
stubble and finds nothing to move. Only the red berries of 
that slender tree seem as if they would fain remind ns of some- 
thing cheerful; and the measured beat of the thresher's flail 
calls up the thought that in the dry and fallen ear lies so much 
of nourishment and life^ 

Thus hope springs ever from the bosom of sadness. A wel- 
come to the New Year mingles with our fond farewell to the 
old. Hail to the present with all the work it brings ! Its 
restlessness, if looked at aright, becomes a golden prophecy. 
We will not read its prose and count our stops as schools have 
taught ; but the heart shall chant it ; and tones shall change the 
words to music that shall write itself on all coming time. 

New York welcomes the new year in much the same style 
that she does everything else. She is not prone, as the Quaker 
says, " to get into the stillness" to express any of her emotions. 
Such a hubbub as was kept up on the night of the 31st I never 



LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 59 

heard. Such a firing out of the old year, and such a firing in 
of the new ! Fourth of July in Boston is nothing compared to 
it. The continual discharge of guns and pistols prevented my 
reading or writing in peace, and I took refuge in bed ; but every 
five minutes a lurid flash darted athwart the walls, followed by 
the hateful crash of fire-arms. If any good thing is expressed 
by that sharp voice, it lies beyond the power of my imagina- 
tion to discover it; why men should choose it for the utterance 
of joy is more than I can tell. 

The racket of these powder-devilkins kept me awake till two 
o'clock. At five I was roused by a stout Hibernian voice, 
almost under my window, shouting, "Pa-ther!" "Pa-ther!" 

Peter did not answer, and ofi" went a pistol. Upon this 

Peter was fain to put his head out of the window, and inquire 
what was wanted. " A bright New- Year to ye, Pa-ther. Get 
VL\), and open the door." 

The show in the shop windows during the week between 
Christmas and ISTew Year's Day was splendid, I assure you. 
All that Parisian taste or English skill could furnish was 
spread out to tempt the eye. How I did want the wealth of 
Rothschild that I might make all the world a jDresent ! and 
then, methinks, I could still long for another world to endow. 
The happiness of Heaven must consist in loving and giving. 
What else is there worth living for"? I have often involun- 
tarily applied to myself a remark made by Madame Roland. 
" Reflecting upon what part I was fitted to perform in the 
world," says she, " I could never think of any that quite satis- 
fied me but that of divine providence." To some this may 
sound blasphemous; it was, however, merely the spontaneous 
and child-like utterance of a loving and liberal soul. 

Though no great observer of times and seasons, I do like the 
universal custom of ushering in the new year with gifts and 
gladsome wishes. I will not call these returning seasons 
notches cut in a stick to count our prison hours, but rather a 
garlanding of milestones on the way to our Father's mansion. 

In New York they observe this festival after the old Dutch 
fashion; and the Dutch, you know, were famous lovers of good 
eating. No lady, that is a lady, will be out in the streets on 
the first of January. Every woman, that is " anybody," stays 
at home dressed in her best, and by her side is a table covered 
with cakes, preserves, wines, oysters, hot cofiee, &c., and as 
every gentleman is in honour bound to call on every lady whose 



60 LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 

acquaintance he does not intend to cut, the amount of eating 
and drinking done by some fashionable beaux must of course 
be very considerable. The number of calls is a matter of pride 
and boasting among ladies, and there is, of course, considerable 
rivalry in the magnificence and variety of the eating tables. This 
custom is eminently Dutch in its character, and will pass away 
before a higher civilisation. 

To furnish forth this treat the shops vied with each other to 
the utmost. Confectionery abounded in the shape of every 
living thing; besides many things nowhere to be found, not 
even among gnomes, or fairies, or uncouth merrows of the sea. 
Cakes were of every conceivable shape — pyramids, obelisks, 
towers, pagodas, castles, tfec. Some frosted loaves nestled lov- 
ingly in a pretty basket of sugar eggs ; others were garlanded 
with flowers, or surmounted by cooing doves or dancing cupids. 
Altogether, they made a pretty show in Broadway — too pretty, 
since the object was to minister to heartless vanity or tempt 
a sated appetite. 

But I will not moralise. Let us all have virtue, and then 
there will be no further need to talk of it, as the German wisely 
said. 

There is one lovely feature in this annual festival. It is a 
season when all past neglect, all family feuds, all heart-burning 
and estrangement among friends may be forgotten and laid 
aside for ever. They who have not spoken for years may renew 
acquaintance, without any unpleasant questions asked, if they 
signify a wish to do so by calling on the first of January. Wish- 
ing all may copy this Avarm bit of colouring in our social picture, 
I bid you farewell, with my heart's best blessing and this one 
scrap of morals : may you treat every human being as you would 
treat him, and sj^eak of every one as you would speak if sure 
that death would part you before next New Year's Day. 



LETTER XIIL 

SCENERY WITHIN THE SOUL VALLEY DE SHAM TRUTH IN ACT 

AS WELL AS WORD. 

January 20, 1842. 
Is your memory a daguerreotype machine, taking instanta- 
neous likenesses of whatsoever the light of imagination happens 



LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. Gl 

to rest upon ? I wish mine were not, especially in a city like 
this — unless it would be more select in its choice and engrave 
only the beautiful. Though I should greatly prefer the green 
fields, with cows chewing the cud under shady trees by the side 
of deej), quiet pools — still I would find no fault to have my gal- 
lery partly filled with the palaces of our " merchant princes," 
built of the sparkling Sing Sing marble, which glitters in the 
sunlight like fairy domes; but the aforesaid daguerreotype will 
likewise engrave an ugly, angular building which stands at the 
corner of Division Street, protruding its sharp corners into the 
midst of things, determined that all the world shall see it 
whether it will or no, and covered with signs from cellar to 
garret to blazon forth all it contains. 'Tis a caricature likeness 
of the nineteenth century, and like the nineteenth century it 
plagues me; I would I could get quit of it. 

I know certain minds imbued with poetic philosophy who 
earnestly seek all forms of outward beauty in this world, be- 
lieving that their images become deeply impressed on the soul 
that loves them, and thus constitute its scenery through eter- 
nity. If I had faith in this theory, that large and many-labelled 
thing of bricks and mortar at the corner of Division Street 
would almost drive me to despair; for though the spirit of 
beauty can witness that I love it not, its lines are branded into 
my mind with most disagreeable distinctness. I know not why 
it is so; for assuredly this is not a sinner above many other 
structures, built by contract and inhabited by unloveable beings. 

Luckily, no forms can re-appear in another world which are 
not within the soul. The sublime landscape there belongs to 
him who has spiritually retired apart into high places to pray: 
not to the cultivated traveller with his mind's portfolio filled 
with only outside images of Alpine scenery, or of huge Plin- 
limmon veiled in clouds. The gardens there are not for nabobs, 
who exchange rupees for rare and fragrant roses; but for hum- 
ble, loving souls who cherish those sweet charities of life that 
lie " scattered at the feet of man like flowers." Thanks be to 
Him who careth for all he hath made, the poor child running 
about naked in the miserable abodes at Five Points, though the 
whole of his mortal life should be of hardship and privation, 
may, by the grace of God, fashion for himself as beautiful an 
eternity as Victoria's son; nay, perchance his situation, bad as 
it is, involves even less danger of losing that beauty which alone 
remains when the world, and all images thereof, pass away like 



62 LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 

mist before the rising sun. The outward is but a seeming and 
a show; the inward alone is permanent and real. 

That men have small faith in this is witnessed by their doings. 
Parents shriek with terror to see a beloved child on the steep 
roof of lofty buildings lest his body should fall a mutilated heap 
upon the pavement; but they can, without horror, send him to 
grow rich by trade in such places as Havanna or New Orleans, 
where his soul is almost sure to fall, battered and crushed till 
scarcely one feature of God's image remains to be recognised. 
If heaven were to them as real as earth they could not thus 
make contracts with Satan to buy the shadow for the substance. 

Alas, how few of us, even the wisest and the best, believe in 
truth, and are willing to trust it entirely. How we pass 
through life in simulation and false shows ! In our pitiful 
anxiety how we shall appear before men, Ave forget how we 
appear before angels. Yet is their '' public opinion" somewhat 
that concerns us most nearly. Passing by the theatre, I saw 
announced for performance a comedy called the " Valley de 
Sham." That simple sentence of misspelled French brought to 
my mind a whole railroad train of busy thought. I smiled as 
I read it, and said within myself. Is not that comedy New 
York 1 Nay, is not the whole world a Valley of Sham 1 Are 
not you, and I, and every other mortal, the " valet" of some 
''sham" or other'? 

"I scorn this hated scene 
Of masking and disguise, 
Where men on men still gleam, 
"With falseness in their eyes; 
Where all is counterfeit, 
And truth hath nev^er say; 
Where hearts themselves do cheat, 
Concealing hope's decay; 

"Go search thy heart, poor fool, 
And mark its passions well; 
'Twere time to go to school — 
'Twere time the truth to tell— 
'Twere time this world should cast 
Its infant slough away, 
And hearts burst forth at last, 
Into the light of day. — 
'Twere time all learned to be 
Fit for Eternity." 

My friend, hast thou ever thought how pleasant and alto- 
gether lovely would be a life of entire sincerity, married to 



LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 63 

perfect love 1 The wildest stories of magic skill or fairy power 
could not equal the miracles that would be wrought by such a 
life ; for, it would change this hollow masquerade of veiled and 
restless souls into a place of divine communion. 

Oh, let us no longer utter false, squeaking voices through 
our stifling masks. If w^e have attained so far as to speak no 
lie, let us make the nobler effort to live none. Art thou troubled 
with vain fears concerning to-day's bread and to-morrow's gar- 
ment 1 Let thy every word and act be perfect truth, uttered in 
genuine love ; and though thou mayest ply thy spiritual trades 
all unconscious of their results, yet be assured that thus, and 
thus only, canst thou weave royal robes of eternal beauty, and 
fill ample storehouses, to remain long after Wall Street and 
State Street have crumbled into dust. 

Be true to thyself Let not the forms of business, or the 
conventional arrangements of society, seduce thee into false- 
hood. Have no fears of the harshness of sincerity. Truth is 
harsh only Avhen divorced from love. There is no refinement 
like holiness ; " for which humility is but the other name." 
Politeness is but a parrot mockery of her heavenly tones, which 
the world lisps and stammers, to imitate, as best she can, the 
pure language known to us only in beautiful fragments. Not 
through the copy shall the fair original ever be restored. 

Above all, be true to thyself in religious utterance, or remain 
for ever silent. Speak only according to thine own genuine, 
inward experience ; and look well to it that thou repeatest no 
phrase prescribed by creeds, or familiarly used by sects, unless 
that phrase really conveys some truth into thine own soul. 
There is far too much of this muttering of dead language. 
Indeed, the least syllable of it is too much for him who has 
faith in the God of truth. Wouldst thou give up thy plain, 
expressive English to mumble Greek phrases, without the dim- 
mest perception of their meaning, because schools and colleges 
have taught that they mean thus and so 1 Or, wilt thou main- 
tain a blind reverence for words which really have no more 
life for thee than old garments stuffed with chaff? Multi- 
tudes who make no " profession of religion," as the phrase is, 
are passively driven in the traces of a blind sectarianism, from 
which they lack either the energy or the courage to depart. 
When I see such startled by an honest inquiry of what is really 
meant by established forms or current phrases, I am reminded 
of the old man in the play, who said, " I speak no Greek, 



64 LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 

though I love the sound on't ; it goes so thundering as it 
conjured devils." 

Not against any form, or phrase do I enter a protest ; but 
only against its unmeaning use. If to thy soul it really em- 
bodies truth, to thee it should be most sacred. But spiritual 
dialects, learned and spoken by rote, are among the worst of 
mockeries. " The man who claims to speak only as books 
enable him, as synods use terms, as fashion guides, or as 
interest commands, only babbles. Let him hush." 

Be true to thy friend. Never speak of his faults to another, 
to show thine own discrimination ; but open them all to him 
with candour and true gentleness. .Forgive all his errors and 
his sins, be they ever so many ; but do not excuse the slightest 
deviation from rectitude. Never forbear to dissent from a false 
opinion or a wrong j)ractice from mistaken motives of kind- 
ness ; nor seek thus to have thine own weakness sustained ; for 
these things cannot be done without injury to thy soul. " God 
forbid," says Emerson, " that when I look to friendship as a 
firm rock to sustain me in moral emergencies, I should find it 
nothing but a mush of concession. Better be a nettle in the 
side of my friend than to be merely his echo." 

As thou wouldst be true to thy friend, be so likewise to thy 
country. Love her, with all her faults ; but on the faults them- 
selves pour out thy honest censure. Thus shalt thou truly serve 
her, and best rebuke the hirelings that w^ould make her lose her 
freedom for the tickling of her ears. 

Lastly, be true to the world. Benevolence, like music, is a 
universal language. It cannot freely utter itself in dialects 
that belong to a nation or a clan. In its large significance the 
human race is to thee a brother and a friend. Posterity needs 
much at thy hands, and will receive much, whether thou art 
aware of it or not. Thou mayest deem thyself without influence 
and altogether unimportant. Believe it not. Thy simplest 
act, thy most casual word, is cast into "the great seed-field of 
human thought, and will reappear, as poisonous weed or herb- 
medicinal, after a thousand years." 

Many live as if they were not ashamed to adopt practically 
the selfish creed, uttered in folly or in fun, " Why should I do 
anything for posterity? Posterity has done nothing forme." 
Ay ; but the jiast has done much for thee, and has given 
the future an order upon thee for the payment. If thou hast re- 
ceived counterfeit coin, melt out the dross, and return true metal.. 



LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 65 



LETTER XIV. 

NEWSPAPER BOY — THE FOREIGN BOYS AND THEIR MOTHER — THE 
DRUNKEN WOMAN — THE BURYING-GROUND FOR THE POOR. 

February 17, 1842. 

I WAS always eager for the Spring-time, but never so much 
as now. 

Patience yet a little longer ! and I shall find delicate bells of 
the trailing arbutus, fragrant as an infant's breath, hidden deep 
under their coverlid of autumn leaves, like modest worth in 
this pretending world. My spirit is weary for rural rambles. 
It is sad walking in the city. The streets shut out the sky, 
even as commerce comes between the soul and heaven. The 
busy throng, passing and repassing, fetter freedom, while they 
ojSer no sympathy. The loneliness of the soul is deeper and far 
more restless than in the solitude of the mighty forest. Wher- 
ever are woods and fields I find a home ; each tinted leaf and 
shining pebble is to me a friend ; and wherever I spy a wild 
flower, I am ready to leap up, clap my hands, and exclaim, 
"Cockatoo! he know me very well!" as did the poor New 
Zealander when he recognised a bird of his native clime in the 
menageries of London. 

But amid these magnificent masses of sparkling marble, hewn 
in prison, I am all alone. For eiglit weary months I have met 
in the crowded streets but two faces I had ever seen before. 
Of some, I would I could say that I should never see them 
again ; but they haunt me in my sleep, and come between me . 
and the morning. Beseeching looks, begging the comfort and 
the hope I have no power to give. Hungry eyes, that look as 
if they had pleaded long for sympathy, and at last gone mute 
in still despair. Through what woful, what frightful masks 
does the human soul look forth, leering, peeping, and defying, 
in this thoroughfare of nations. Yet, in each and all lie the 
capacities of an archangel ; as the majestic oak lies enfolded in 
the acorn that we tread carelessly under foot, and which decays, 
perchance, for want of soil to root in. 

The other day 1 went forth for exercise merely, without 
other hope of enjoyment than a farewell to the setting sun, on 
the now deserted Battery, and a fresh kiss from the breezes of 

F 



66 LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 

the sea ere they passed through the polluted city, bearing heal- 
ing on their wings. I had not gone far when I met a little 
ragged urchin, about four years old, with a heaj) of newspapers, 
" more big as he could carry," under his little arm, and another 
clenched in his small red fist. The sweet voice of childhood 
was prematurely cracked into shrillness, by screaming street- 
cries at the top of his lungs ; and he looked blue, cold and dis- 
consolate. May the angels guard him ! How I wanted to 
warm him in my heart. I stood looking after him as he went 
shiverinoj alonof. Imao^ination followed him to the miserable 
cellar where he probably slept on dirty straw ; I saw him 
flogged, after his day of cheerless toil, because he had failed to 
bring home pence enough for his parents' grog ; I saw wicked 
ones come muttering and beckoning between his young soul 
and heaven; they tempted him to steal, to a^oid the dreaded 
beating. I saw him, years after, bewildered and frightened in 
the police-office, surrounded by hard faces. Their law-jargon 
conveyed no meaning to his ear, awakened no slumbering moral 
sense, taught him no clear distinction between right and 
wrong ; but from their cold, harsh tones, and heartless merri- 
ment, he drew the inference that they were enemies ; and, as 
such, he hated them. At that moment, one tone like a mother's 
voice might have wholly changed his earthly destiny ; one kind 
word of friendly counsel might have saved him — as if an angel 
standing in the genial sunlight, had thrown to him one end of 
a garland, and gently diminishing the distance between them, 
had drawn him safely out of the deep and tangled labyrinth, 
where false echoes and winding paths conspired to make him 
lose his way. 

But watchmen and constables were around him, and they 
have small fellowship with angels. The strong impulses that 
might have become overwhelming love for his race are perverted 
to the bitterest hatred. He tries the universal resort of weak- 
ness against force ; if they are too strong for him, he will be 
too cunning for them. Their cunning is roused to detect his 
cunning ; and thus the gallows-game is played, with interludes 
of damnable merriment from police reports, whereat the heed- 
less multitude laugh, while angels weep over the slow murder 
of a human soul. 

When, oh when, will men learn that society makes and 
cherishes the very crimes it so fiercely punishes, and, in pun- 
ishing, reproduces. 



LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 67 

' ' The key of knowledge first ye take away, 
And then, because ye'v^e robbed him, ye enslave ; 
Ye shut out from him the sweet light of day, 
And then, because he's in the dark, ye pave 
The road, that leads him to his wished-for grave, 
With stones of stumbling : then, if he but tread 
Darkling and slow, ye call him ' fool ' and ' knave ' — 
Doom him to toil, and yet deny him bread : 
Chains round his limbs ye throw, and curses on his head." 

Grod grant the little shivering carrier-boy a brighter destiny 
than I have foreseen for him. 

A little further on, I encountered two young boys fighting 
furiously for some coppers that had been given them, and had 
fallen on the pavement. They had matted, black hair, large, 
lustrous eyes, and an olive complexion. They were evidently 
foreign children, from the sunny clime of Italy or Spain, and 
nature had made them subjects for an artist's dream. Near 
by on the cold stone steps, sat a ragged, emaciated woman, 
whom I conjectured, from the resemblance of her large dark 
eyes, might be their mother; but she looked on their fight with 
languid indifference, as if seeing, she saw it not. I spoke to 
her, and she shook her head in a mournful way, that told me 
she did not understand my language. Poor, forlorn wanderer; 
would I could place thee and thy beautiful boys under shelter 
of sun-ripened vines, surrounded by the music of thy mother- 
land. Pence will I give thee, though political economy reprove 
the deed. They can but appease the hunger of the body ; they 
cannot soothe the hunger of thy heart ; that I obey the kindly 
impulse may make the world none the better — perchance some 
iota the worse ; yet I must needs follow it — I cannot otherwise. 

I raised my eyes above the woman's weather-beaten head, 
and saw behind the window of clear, plate glass, large vases of 
gold and silver, curiously wrought. They spoke significantly 
of the sad contrasts in this disordered world, and excited in my 
mind, whole volumes, not of political, but of angelic economy. 
" Truly," said I, " if the law of love prevailed, vases of gold 
and silver might even more abound — but no homeless outcast 
"would sit shivering beneath their glittering mockery. All 
would be richer, and no man the poorer. When will the world 
learn its best wisdom ? When will the mighty discord come 
into heavenly harmony 1" I looked at the huge stone struc- 
tures of commercial wealth, and they gave an answer that 
chilled my heart. Weary of city walks, I would have turned 



68 LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 

homeward ; but nature, ever true and liarmonious, beckoned to 
me from the Battery, and the glowing twilight gave me friendly 
welcome. It seemed as if the dancing spring hours had thrown 
their rosy mantles on old silvery winter in the lavishness of 
youthful love. 

I opened my heart to the gladsome influence, and forgot that 
earth was not a mirror of the heavens. It was but for a mo- 
ment ; for there, under the leafless trees, lay two ragged little 
boys, asleep in each other's arms. I remembered having read 
in the police reports the day before, that two little children^ 
thus found, had been taken up as vagabonds. They told, with 
simple pathos, how both their mothers had been dead for 
months ; how they had formed an intimate friendship, had 
begged together, had hungered together, and together slept 
uncovered beneath the steel-cold stars. 

The twilight seemed no longer warm ; and brushing away a 
tear, I walked hastily homeward. As I turned into the street 
where God has provided me with a friendly shelter, something* 
lay across my path. It was a woman, apparently dead ; with 
garments all draggled in New York gutters, blacker than waves 
of the infernal rivers. Those who gathered around, said she 
had fallen in intoxication, and was rendered senseless by the 
force of the blow. They carried her to the watch-house, and 
the doctor promised she should be well attended. But, alas, 
for watch-house charities to a breaking heart ! I could not 
bring myself to think otherwise than that hers was a breaking- 
heart. Could she but give a full revelation of early emotions 
checked in their full and kindly flow, of affections repressed, of 
hojoes blighted, and energies misemployed through ignorance, 
the heart would kindle and melt, as it does when genius stirs 
its deepest recesses. 

It seemed as if the voice of human woe was destined to fol- 
low me through the whole of that unblest day. Late in the 
night I heard the sound of voices in the street, and raising the 
window^, saw a poor, staggering woman in the hands of a 
watchman. My ear caught the words, "Thank you kindly^ 
sir. I should like to go home." The sad and humble accents 
in which the simj^le phrase was uttered, the dreary image of 
the watch-house, which that poor wretch dreamed was her 
home, proved too much for my overloaded sympathies. I hid 
my face in the pillow and wept ; for " my heart was almost 
breaking with the misery of my kind." 



LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 69 

I thought, then, that I would walk no more abroad, till the 
fields were green. But my mind and body grow alike impatient 
of being enclosed within walls ; both ask for the free breeze, 
and the wide, blue dome that overarches and embraces all. 
Again I rambled forth, under the February sun, as mild and 
genial as the breath of June. Heart, mind, and frame grew 
glad and strong, as we wandered on, past the old Stuyvesant 
church, which a few years ago was surrounded by fields and 
Dutch farm-houses, but now stands in the midst of peopled 
streets, — and past the trim, new houses, with their green 
verandahs, in the airy suburbs. Following the rail-road, which 
lay far beneath our feet, as we wound our way over the hills, 
we came to the burying-ground of the poor. Weeds and 
brambles grew along the sides, and the stubble of last year's 
grass waved over it, like dreary memories of the past ; but the 
sun smiled on it, like God's love on the desolate soul. It was 
inexpressibly touching to see the frail memorials of afiection, 
placed there by hearts crushed under the weight of poverty. 
In one place was a small rude cross of wood, with the initials 
J. S. cut with a penknife, and apparently filled with ink. In 
another, a small hoop had been bent in the form of a heart, 
painted green, and nailed on a stick at the head of the grave. 
On one upright shingle was painted only "Mutter;" the 
German w^ord for Mother. On another was scrawled, as if 
with charcoal: "So ruhe ivohl, du, unser liebes kind^' (Rest well, 
our beloved child). One recorded life's brief history thus : 
" H. G. born in Bavaria; died in New York." Another short 
epitaph, in French, told that the sleeper came from the banks 
of the Seine. 

The predominance of foreign epitaphs aflected me deeply. 
Who could now tell with what high hopes those departed ones 
had left the heart-homes of Germany, the sunny hills of Spain, 
the laughing skies of Italy, or the wild beauty of Switzerland ? 
Would not the friends they had left in their childhood's home, 
weep scalding tears to find them in a pauper's grave, with their 
initials rudely carved on a fragile board 1 Some had not even 
these frail memorials. It seemed there was none to care 
whether they lived or died. A wide, deep trench was opened; 
and there I could see piles of unpainted cofiins heaped one 
upon the other, left uncovered with earth till the yawning 
cavity was filled with its hundred tenants. 

Returning homeward we passed a Catholic burying-ground. 



70 LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 

It belonged to the ujjper classes, and was filled with marble 
monuments, covered with long inscriptions. But none of them 
touched my heart like that rude shingle with the simple word 
" Mutter" inscribed thereon. The gate w^as open, and hun- 
dreds of Irish, in their best Sunday clothes, were stepping 
reverently among the graves, and kissing the very sods. Ten- 
derness for the dead is one of the loveliest features of their 
nation and their Church. 

The evening was closing in as we returned, thoughtful, but 
not gloomy. Bright lights shone through crimson, blue, and 
green, in the apothecaries' windows, and were reflected in pris- 
matic beauty from the dirty pools in the street. It was like 
poetic thoughts in the minds of the poor and ignorant; like the 
memory of pure asj^irations in the vicious; like a rainbow of 
promise, that God's spirit never leaves even the most degraded 
soul. I smiled as my spirit gratefully accejoted this love-token 
from the outward; and I thanked our heavenly Father for a 
world beyond this. 



LETTER Xy. 

MACDONALD CLARKE, THE MAD POET. 

March 17, 1842. 

It may seem strange to you that among the mass of beings in 
this great human hive, I should occupy an entire letter with, 
one whose life was like a troubled and fantastic dream; appar- 
ently without use to himself or others. Yet he was one who 
has left a record on the public heart and will not be soon for- 
gotten. For several years past the eccentricities of Macdonald 
Clarke have been the city talk, and almost every child in the 
street was familiar with his countenance. In latter years the 
record of inexpressible misery was written there ; but lie is said 
to have had rather an unusual portion of beauty in his youth ; 
and even to tlie last the heart looked out from his wild eyes 
with most friendly earnestness. I saw him but twice, and now 
mourn sincerely that the pressure of many avocations prevented 
my seeking to see him oftener. So many forms of unhaj^piness 
crowd upon us in this world of perversion and disorder, that it 
is impossible to answer all demands. But stranger as poor 



LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 71 

Clarke was, it now makes me sad that I did not turn out of 
my way to utter the simple word of kindness which never 
failed to rejoice his suffering and childlike soul. 

I was always deeply touched by the answer of the poor, 
heart-broken page in Hope Leslie : " Yes, lady, I have lost my 
Avay ! " How often do I meet with those who, on the crowded 
pathway of life, have lost their way. With poor Clarke it was 
so from the very outset. Something that was not quite in- 
sanity, but was nigh akin to it, marked his very boyhood. 

He was born in New London, Connecticut, and was school- 
mate with our eloquent friend, Charles C. Burleigh, who always 
speaks of him as the most kind-hearted of boys, but even then 
characterised by the oddest vagaries. His mother died at sea 
when he was twelve years old, being on a voyage for her health. 
He says — 

" One night as the bleak October breeze 
Was sighing a dirge through the leafless trees, 
She was borne by rough men in the chilly dark, 
Down to the wharf -side, where a barque 
Waited for its precious freight. 
I watched the ship-lights long and late ; 
When I could see them no more for tears, 
I turned drooping away, 
And felt that mine were darkening years." 

And darkened indeed they were. " That delicate boy," as he 
describes himself, "an only son, having been petted to a 
pitiable unfitness for the sterner purposes of life, went forth 
alone to strus-fjle with the world's unfriendliness and front its 
frowns." 

He was in Philadelphia at one period, but all we ever heard 
of him there was, that he habitually slept in the grave-yard by 
the side of Franklin's monument. In 1819 he came to New 
York, where he wrote for newspapers, and struggled as he 
could with poverty, assisted from time to time by benevolence 
which he never sought. A sad situation for one who, like him, 
had a nerve protruding at every pore. 

In New York he became in love with a handsome young 
actress of seventeen. His poverty and obvious incapacity to 
obtain a livelihood made the match objectionable in the eyes of 
her mother, and they eloped. The time chosen was as wild 
and inopportune as most of his movements. On the very night 
she was to play Ophelia, on her way to the Park Theatre, she 
absconded with her lover and was married. Of course the play 



72 LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 

could not go on ; the audience were disappointed and the man- 
ager angry. The mother of the young hidy, a strong, masculine 
woman, was so full of wrath that she pulled her daughter out 
of bed at midnight and dragged her home. The bridegroom 
tried to pacify the manager by the most polite explanations, 
but received nothing but kicks in return, with orders never to 
show his face within the building again. The young couple 
were strongly attached to each other, and, of course, were not 
long kept separate. But Macdonald, who had come of a wealthy 
family, was too proud to have his wife appear on the stage 
again, and the remarkable powers of his own mind were ren- 
dered useless by the jar that ran through them all ; of course, 
poverty came upon them like an armed man. They suffered 
greatly, but still clung to each other with the most fervid aJffec- 
tion. Sometimes they slept in the deserted market-house, and 
when the weather would permit, under the shadow of the trees. 
One dreadful stormy night they were utterly without shelter, 
and in the extremity of their need sought the residence of her 
mother. They knocked and knocked in vain ; at last the suf- 
fering young wife proposed climbing a shed in order to enter 
the window of a chamber she used to occupy. To accomplish 
this pur23ose Macdonald placed boards across a rain-water hogs- 
head at the corner of the shed. He mounted first and drew 
her up after him, when suddenly the boards broke and both 
fell into the water. Their screams brought out the strong- 
handed and unforgiving mother. She seized her offending 
daughter by the hair and plunged her up and down in the water 
several times before she would help her out. She finally took 
her into the house and left Macdonald to escape as he could. 
They were not allowed to live together again, and the wife 
seemed compelled to return to the stage as a means of obtain- 
ing bread. She was young and pretty, her affections were 
blighted, she was poor, and her profession abounded with temp- 
tations. It was a situation much to be pitied, for it hardly 
admitted of other result than that which followed. They who 
had loved so fondly were divorced to meet no more. When- 
ever Macdonald alluded to this part of his strange history, as 
he often did to a very intimate friend, he always added, " I 
never blamed her, though it almost broke my heart. She was 
driven to it, and I always pitied her." 

From this period the wildness of poor Clarke's nature in 
creased until he became generally known by the name of the 



LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 73 

"■ Mad Poet." His strange productions bore about the same 
relation to poetry that grotesques, with monkey faces jabbering 
out of lily cups, and knarled trees with knot-holes twisted into 
hags' grimaces, bear to graceful arabesques with trailing vines 
and interwisted blossoms. Yet was the undoubted presence of 
genius always visible. Ever and anon a light from another 
world shone on his innocent soul, kindling the holiest aspira- 
tions which could find for themselves no form in his bewildered 
intellect, and so fell from his pen in uncouth and jagged frag- 
ments still sparkling with the beauty of the region whence they 
came. His metajDhors were at times singularly fanciful. He 
thus describes the closing day — 

* ' Now twilight lets her curtain down, 
And pins it vnth. a star." 

And in another place he talks of memory that shall last 

"Whilst the ear of the earth hears the hyion of the ocean." 

M. B. Lamar, late President of Texas, once met this eccen- 
tric individual at the room of William Page, the distinguished 
artist. The interview led to the following very descriptive 
lines from Lamar : — 

"Say, have you seen Macdonald Clarke, 
The poet of the moon ? 

He is a d d eccentric lark. 

As famous as Zip Coon. 

' ' He talks of love and dreams of fame. 
And lauds his minstrel art; 
He has a kind of zig-zag brain — 
But yet a straight-line heart. 

"Sometimes his strains so sweetly float. 
His harp so sweetly sings, 
You'd almost think the tuneful hand 
Of Jubal touched the strings. 

' ' But soon, anon, with failing art, 
The strain as rudely jars, 
As if a driver tuned the harp. 
In cadence with his cars." 

He was himself well aware that his mind was a broken in- 
strument. He described himself as — 

' ' A poet comfortably crazy — 
As pliant as a weeping willow — 
Loves most everybody's girls; an't lazy, — 
Can write an hundred lines an hour, 
With a rackety, whackety raihoad power." 



74 LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 

From the phrase, "loves most everybody's girls," it must 
not be inferred that he was profligate. On the contrary, he 
was innocent as a child. He talked of love continually; but 
it was of a mystic union of souls whispered to him by angels^ 
heard imperfectly in the lonely, echoing chambers of his soul, 
and uttered in phrases learned on earth, all unfit for the holy 
sentiment. Like the philosopher of the east, he knew by in- 
ward revelation that his soul — 

' ' In parting from its warm abode, 
Had lost its partner on the road, 
And never joined their hands." 

His whole life was, in fact, a restless seeking for his other half. 
This idea continually broke from him in plaintive, wild, im- 
ploring tones. 

"I have met so much of scorn 

From those to whom my thoughts were kmd, 
I've fancied there was never born 
On earth for me one kindred mind." 

" The soul that now is cursed and wild, 
In one fierce, wavering, ghastly flare. 
Would be calm and blest as a sleeping child, 
That dreams its mother's breast is there; 
Calm as the deep midsummer's air, 
Calm as that brow so mild and fair. 
Calm as God's angels everywhere, 
For all is heaven — if Mary's there." 

This restless idea often centred itself upon some young lady 
whom he followed for a long time with troublesome but guile- 
less enthusiasm. The objects of his pursuit were sometimes 
afraid of him, but there was no occasion for this. As a New 
York editor very happily said, " He pursued the little Red 
Kiding Hoods of his imagination to bless and not to devour." 

Indeed, in all respects his nature was most kindly ; insomuch 
that he sufiered continual torture in this great Babel of misery 
and crime. He wanted to relieve all the world, and was fren- 
zied that he could not. All that he had — money, watch, rings, 
were given to forlorn street wanderers with a compassionate 
and even deferential gentleness that sometimes brought tears 
to their eyes. Often, when he had nothing to give, he would 
snatch up a ragged, shivering child in the street, carry it to the 
door of some princely mansion, and demand to see the lady of 
the house. When she appeared he would say, " Madam, God 



LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 75 

has made you one of the trustees of his wealth. It is His, not 
yours. Take this poor child; wash it, feed it, clothe it, com- 
fort it — in God's name." 

Ladies stared at such abruj^t address, and deemed the natu- 
ral action of the heart sufficient proof of madness ; but the little 
ones were seldom sent away uncomforted. 

Clarke was simple and temperate in all his habits, and in 
his deepest poverty always kept up the neat appearance of a 
gentleman; if his coat was thread-bare, it was never soiled. 
His tendency to refinement was shown in the church he chose 
to worship in. It was Grace Church, the plainest but most 
highly respectable of the Episcopal churches in this city. He 
was a constant attendant, and took comfort in the devotional 
frame of mind excited by the music. He was confirmed at 
that church but a few weeks before his death, and commem- 
orated the event in lines, of which the following are an ex- 
tract : — 

"Calmly circled round the altar, 

The chiklren of the Cross are kneeling. 

Forward, brother — do not falter. 
Fast the tears of sin are steahng; 

Washmg memory bright and clean, 

Makmg futurity serene." 

During the past winter he raved more than usual. The 
editor of the Aurora says he met him at his simple repast of 
apples and milk in a public-house on last Christmas evening. 
He was absolutely mad. " You think I am Macdonald Clarke," 
said he, " but I am not. The mad poet dashed out his brains 
last Thursday night at the foot of Emmet's monument. The 
storm that night was the tears heaven wept over him. God 
animated the body again. I am not now Macdonald Clarke, 
but Afara, an archangel of the Almighty." 

" I went to Grace Church to-day. Miss sat in the seat 

behind me, and I tossed this velvet Bible with its golden clasps 
into her lap. What do you think she did ? A moment she 
looked siirj)rised, and then she tossed it back again. So they 
all treat me. All I want is some religious people that love 
God and love one another to treat me kindly. One sweet smile 

of Mary would make my mind all light and peace, and I 

would write such poetry as the world never saw. 

" Something ought to be done for me," said he; " I can't take 
care of myself. I ought to be sent to the asylum ; or wouldn't 



76 



LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 



it be better to die "i The moon shines through the willow trees 
on the graves in St. Paul's Church-yard, and they look all cov- 
ered with diamonds — don't you think they look like diamonds? 
Then there is a lake in Greenwood Cemetery; that would be a 
good cool place for me — I am not afraid to die. The stars of 
heaven look down on that lake and it reflects their brightness." 

The Mary to whom he alluded was a wealthy young lady of 
this city, one of those whom his distempered imagination fan- 
cied was his lost half. Some giddy young persons with 
thoughtless cruelty, sought to excite him on this favourite idea 
by every species of joke and trickery. They made him believe 
that the young lady w^as dying with love for him, but restrained 
by her father; they sent him letters purporting to be from her 
hand ; and finally led him to the house on pretence of introduc- 
ing him, and then left him on the door-step. The poor fellow 
returned to Carlton House in high frenzy. The next night but 
one he was found in the streets kneeling before a poor beggar, 
to whom he had just given all his money. The beggar, seeing 
his forlorn condition, wished to return it, and said, " Poor fel- 
low, you need it more than I." When the watchman encountered 
them, Clarke was writing busily on his knee the history of his 
companion, which he was beseeching him to tell. The cap was 
blown from his head, on which a pitiless storm was pelting. 
The watchman could make nothing of his incoherent talk and 
he was taken to the Egyptian Tombs, a prison where vagabonds 
and criminals await their trial. 

In the morning he begged that the book-keeper of the Carl- 
ton House might be sent for, saying that he was his only friend. 
This gentleman conveyed him to the Lunatic Asylum on Black- 
well's Island. Two of my friends who visited him there found 
him as comfortable as his situation allowed. He said he was 
treated with great kindness, but his earnest desire to get out 
rendered the interview very heart-trying. He expressed a 
wish to recover that he might write hymns and spiritual songs 
all the rest of his life. In some quiet intervals he complained 
of the jokes that had been practised on him, and said it was 
not kind; but he was fearfully delirious most of the time — 
calling vociferously for "Water! water!" and complaining that 
his brain was all on fire. 

He died a few days after, aged about forty-four. His friend 
of the Carlton House took upon himself the charge of the 
funeral, and it is satisfactory to think that it was all ordered 



LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 77 



just as tlie kind and simple-hearted being would have himself 
desired. The body was conveyed to Grace Church, and the 
funeral service performed in the presence of a few who had 
loved him. Among these was Fitz-Greene Halleck, who, it is 
said, often befriended him in the course of his suffering life. 
Many children were present ; and one with tearful eyes brought 
a beautiful little bunch of flowers which a friend laid upon his 
bosom with reverent tenderness. He was buried at Greenwood 
Cemetery under the shadow of a pine tree, next to the grave 
of a little child — a fitting resting-place for the loving and child- 
like poet. 

He had often expressed a wish to be buried at Greenwood. 
Walking there with a friend of mine they selected a spot for 
his grave, and he seemed pleased as a boy when told of the 
arrangements that should be made at his funeral. " I hope 
the children will come," said he, " I want to be buried by the 
side of children. Four thincfs I am sure there will be in 
heaven: music, plenty of little childi'en, flowers, and pure air." 

They are now getting up a subscrijDtion for a marble monu- 
ment. It seems out of keeping with his character and destiny. 
It were better to plant a rose-bush by his grave and mark his 
name on a simple white cross, that the few who loved him 
might know where the gentle, sorrowing wanderer sleeps. 



LETTER XVI. 

A GREAT FIRE — JAJ^E PLATO'S GARDEN — MONEY IS NOT WEALTH. 

August 7, 1842. 

Were you ever near enough to a great fire to be in danger 1 
If you were not, you have missed one form of keen excitement 
and awful beauty. Last week, we had here one of the most 
disastrous conflagrations that have occurred for a long time. It 
caught, as is supposed, by a spark from a furnace falling on 
the roof of a wheelwright's shop. A single bucket of w^ater 
thrown on immediately, would have extinguished it ; but it 
was not instantly perceived : roofs were dry, and the wind was 
blowing a perfect March gale. Like slavery in our government, 
it was not put out in the day of small beginnings, and so went 



78 LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 

on, increasing in its rage, making a great deal of hot and disa- 
greeable work. 

It began at the corner of Chrystie Street, not far from our 
dwelling ; and the blazing shingles, that came flying through 
the air, like a storm in the infernal regions, soon kindled our 
roof. We thought to avert the danger by buckets of water, 
until the block opposite us was one sheet of fire, and the heat 
like that of the furnace which tried Shadrach, Meschech, and 
Abednego. Then we began to pack our goods, and run with 
them in all haste to places of safety; an effort more easily 
described than done — for the streets all round were filled with 
a dense mass of living beings, each eager in playing the engines, 
or saving the lares of his own hearth-stone. 

Nothing surjDrised me so much as the rapidity of destruction. 
At three o'clock in the afternoon, there stood before us a close 
neighbourhood of houses, inhabited by those whose faces were 
familiar, though their names were mostly unknown ; at five, 
the whole was a pile of smoking ruins. The humble tenement 
of Jane Plato, the coloured woman, of whose neatly-kept garden 
and whitewashed fences I wrote you last summer, has passed 
away for ever. The purple iris, and yellow dafibdils, and 
variegated sweet-williams, were all trampled down under heaps 
of red-hot mortar. I feel a deeper sympathy for the destruction 
of poor Jane's little garden, than I do for those who have lost 
whole blocks of houses ; for I have known and loved flowers, 
like the voice of a friend — but with houses and lands I was 
never cumbered. In truth, I am ashamed to say how much I 
grieve for that little flowery oasis in a desert of bricks and 
stone. My beautiful trees, too — the Ailanthus, whose graceful 
blossoms, changing their hue from month to month, blessed me 
the live-long summer ; and the glossy young Catalpa, over 
which it threw its arms so lovingly and free — there they stand, 
scorched and blackened ; and I know not whether nature, with 
her mighty healing power, can ever make them live again. 

The utilitarian and the moralist will rebuke this trifling 
record, and remind me that one hundred houses were burned, 
and not less than two thousand persons deprived of shelter for 
the night. Pardon my childish lamentations. Most gladly 
would I give a home to all the destitute; but I cannot love 
two thousand persons ; and I loved my trees. Insurance stocks 
are to me an abstraction; but stock gilliflowers, a most pleasant 
reality. 



LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 79 

"Will your kind heart be shocked that I seem to sympathize 
more with Jane Phito for the destruction of her little garden- 
patch, than I do with others for loss of houses and furniture ? 

Do not misunderstand me. It is simply my way of saying 
that money is not wealth. I know the universal opinion of 
mankind is to the contrary ; but it is nevertheless a mistake. 
Our real losses are those in which the heart is concerned. An 
autograph letter from Napoleon Bonaparte might sell for fifty 
dollars ; but if I possessed such a rare document, would I save 
it from the fire, in preference to a letter from a beloved and 
deceased husband, filled with dear little household phrases 1 
Which would a mother value most, the price of the most elegant 
pair of Parisian slippers, or a little worn-out shoe, once filled 
with a precious infant foot, now walking with the angels 1 

Jane Plato's garden might not be worth much in dollars and 
cents ; but it was to her the endeared companion of many a 
pleasant hour. After her daily toil, she might be seen, till 
twilight deepened into evening, digging round the roots, prun- 
ing branches, and training vines. I know my experience how 
very dear inanimate objects become under such circumstances. 
I have dearly loved the house in which I lived, but I could not 
love the one I merely owned. The one in which the purse had 
interest might be ten times more valuable in the market ; but 
let me calculate as I would, I should mourn most for the one 
in which the heart had invested stock. The common wild 
flower that I have brought to my garden, and nursed, and 
petted, till it has lost all home-sickness for its native woods, is 
really more valuable than the costly exotic, purchased in full 
bloom from the conservatory. Men of princely fortunes never 
know what wealth of happiness there is in a garden. 

"The rich man in his garden walks, 
Beneath his garden trees ; 
Wrapped in a dream of other things, 
He seems to take his ease. 

"One moment he beholds his flowers, 
The next they are forgot ; 
He eateth of his rarest fruits 
As though he ate them not. 

"It is not wdth the poor man so; 
He knows each inch of ground, 
And every single plant and flower 
That grows ^vithin its bound. 



80 LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 

"And thougli his garden-plot is small, 
Him doth it satisfy ; 
For there's no inch of all his ground, 
That does not fill his eye. 

"It is not with the rich man thiis ; 
For though his grounds are wide. 
He looks beyond, and yet beyond, 
With soul unsatisfied. 

"Yes, in the poor man's garden grow 
Far more than herbs and flowers ; 
Kind thoughts, contentment, peace of mind, 
And joy for weary hours. 

"It is not with the poor man so — 
Wealth, servants, he has none ; 
And all the work that's done for him, 
Must by himself be done." 

I have said this much io prove that money is not wealth, and 
that God's gifts are equal ; though joint-stock companies and 
corporations do their worst to prevent it. 

And all the highest truths, as well as the genuine good, are 
universal. Doctrinal dogmas may be hammered out on theo- 
logical anvils, and appropriated to spiritual corporations, called 
sects. But those high and holy truths, which make the soul 
as one with God and the neighbour, are by their very nature 
universal — open to all who wish to receive. Outward forms 
are always in harmonious correspondence with inward realities ; 
therefore the material types of highest truths defy man's efibrts 
to monopolise. Who can bottle up the sunlight, to sell at 
retail ? or issue dividends of the ocean and the breeze ? 

This great fire, like all calamities, public or private, has its 
bright side. A portion of New York, and that not a small one, 
is for once thoroughly cleaned ; a wide space is opened for our 
vision, and the free passage of the air. True, it looks desolate 
enough now; like a battle fi.eld, when waving banners and 
rushing steeds, and fife and trumpet, all are gone; and the 
dead alone remain. But the dreary sight brings up images of 
those hundred volcanoes spouting flame, and of the scene at 
midnight, so fearful in its beauty. Where houses so lately 
stood, and welcome feet passed over the threshold, and friendly 
voices cheered the fireside, there arose the lurid gleam of 
mouldering fires, with rolling masses of smoke, as if watched 
by giants from the nether world; and between them all lay 



LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 81 

the thick darkness. It was strikingly like Martin's pictures. 
The resemblance renewed by old impression, that if the arts 
are cultivated in the infernal regions, of such are their galleries 
formed; not without a startling beauty, which impresses, while 
it disturbs the mind, because it embodies the idea of power, 
and its discords bear harmonious reh\tion to each other. 

If you wanted to see the real, unqualified beauty of fire, you 
should have stood with me, in the darkness of evening, to gaze 
at a burning house nearly opposite. Four long hours it sent 
forth flame in every variety. Now it poured forth from the 
windows, like a broad banner in the wind ; then it wound 
round the door-posts like a brilliant wreath ; and from the open 
roof there ever went up a fountain of sparks that fell like a 
shower of gems. I watched it for hours, and could not turn 
away from it. In my mind there insensibly grew up a respect 
for that house; because it defied the power of the elements, so 
bravely and so long. It must have been built of sound timber, 
well jointed; and as the houses round it had fallen, its con- 
flagration w^as not hastened by excessive heat, as the others 
had been. It was one o'clock at nis^ht when the last tonirue of 
flame flickered and died reluctantly. The next day, men came 
by order of the city authorities, to pull down the walls. This, 
too, the brave building resisted to the utmost. Hopes were 
fastened to it with grappling irons, and a hundred men tugged, 
and tugged at it, in vain. My respect for it increased, till it 
seemed to mc like an heroic friend. I could not bear that it 
should fall. It seemed to me, if it did, I should no longer feel 
sure that J. Q. Adams and Giddings would stand on their feet 
against Southern aggression. I sent up a joyous shout when 
the irons came out, bringing away only a few bricks, and the 
men fell backward from the force of the shock. But at last 
the wall reeled, and came down with a thundering crash. 
Nevertheless, I will trust Adams and Giddings, tug at them as 
they may. 

By the blessing of heaven on the energy and presence of 
mind of those who came to our help, our walls stand unscathed, 
and nothing was destroyed in the tumult; but our hearts are 
aching; for all round us comes a voice of wailing from the 
houseless and the impoverished. 



82 LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 



LETTER XYII. 

DOVES IN BROADWAY — THE DOVE AND THE PIRATE — PRISONERS 

AND DOVES — Doddridge's dream — genius inspired by 

HOLINESS. 

April 14, 1842. 

In looking over some of my letters, my spirit stands reproved 
for its sadness. In this working-day world, where the bravest 
have need of all their buoyancy and strength, it is sinful to add 
our sorrows to the common load. Blessed are missionaries of 
cheerfulness ! 

"Tis glorious to have one's own proud will, 
And see the crown acknowledged, that we earn ; 
But nobler yet, and nearer to the skies, 
To feel one's self, in hours serene and still. 
One of the spirits chosen by Heaven to turn 
The sunny side of things to human eyes." 

The fault was in my own spirit rather than in the streets of 
New York. "Who has no inward beauty, none perceives, 
though all around is beautiful." Had my soul been at one with 
Nature and with God, I should not have seen only misery and 
vice in my city rambles. To-day I have been so happy in 
Broadway! A multitude of doves went careering before me. 
Now wheeling in graceful circles, their white wings and breasts 
glittering in the sunshine; now descending within the shadow 
of the houses, like a cloud; now soaring high up in the sky, 
till they seemed immense flocks of dusky butterflies; and ever 
as I walked they went before me, with most loving companion- 
ship. If they had anything to say to me, I surely understood 
their language, though I heard it not; for through my whole 
frame there went a feathery buoyancy, a joyous uprising from 
the earth, as if I, too, had wings, with conscious power to use 
them. Then they brought such sweet images to my mind ! I 
remembered the story of the pirate hardened in blood and crime, 
who listened to the notes of a turtle-dove in the stillness of 
evening. Perhaps he had never before heard the soothing tones 
of love. They spoke to his inmost soul, like the voice of an 
angel; and wakened such response there, that he thenceforth 
became a holy man. Then I thought how I would like to have 
this the mission of my spirit; to speak to hardened and sufiering 
hearts, in the tones of a turtle-dove. 



LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 83 

My flying companions brought before me another picture 
which has had a place in the halls of memory for several years. 
I was once visiting a friend in prison for debt; and through the 
grated window, I could see the outside of the criminals' apart- 
ments. On the stone ledges, beneath their windows, alighted 
three or four doves; and hard hands were thrust out between 
the iron bars, to sj^rinkle crumbs for them. The sight brought 
tears to my eyes. Hearts that still loved to feed doves certainly 
must contain somewhat that might be reached by the voice of 
kindness. I had not then reasoned on the subject; but I felt, 
even then, that prisons were not such spiritual hospitals as ought 
to be provided for erring brothers. The bii'ds themselves were 
not of snowy plumage; their little, rose-coloured feet were 
spattered with mud, and their feathers were soiled, as if they, 
too, were jail birds. The outward influences of a city had 
passed over them, as the inward had over those who fed them ; 
nevertheless, they are doves, said I, and have all a dove's 
instincts. It was a significant lesson, and I laid it to my heart. 

But these Broadway doves, ever wheeling before me in 
graceful eddies, why did their serial frolic produce such joyous 
elasticity in my physical frame"? Was it sympathy with nature, 
so intimate that her motions became my own? Or was it a 
revealing that the spiritual body had wings, wherewith I should 
hereafter fly? 

The pleasant, buoyant sensation, recalled to my mind a dream 
which I read, many years ago, in Doddridge's Life and Corre- 
spondence. I will not vouch for it, that my copy is a likeness 
of the original. If anything is added, I know not where I 
obtained it, unless Doddridge himself has since told me. I 
surely have no intention to add of my own. I do not profess 
to give an}' thing like the language; for the words have passed 
from my memory utterly. As I remember the dream, it was 
thus : — 

Dr. Doddridge had been spending the evening with his friend, 
Dr. Watts. Their conversation had been concerning the future 
existence of the soul. Long and earnestly they pursued the 
theme; and both came to the conclusion (rather a remarkable 
one for theologians of that day to arrive at), that it could 
not be they were to sing through all eternity; that each soul 
must necessarily be an individual, and have its appropriate 
employment for thought and affection. As Doddridge walked 
home, his mind brooded over these ideas, and took little cog- 



84 LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 

nizance of outward matters. In this state lie laid his head 
upon the pillow and fell asleep. He dreamed that he was 
dying; he saw his weeping friends round his bedside, and 
wanted to speak to them, but could not. Presently there came 
a nightmare sensation. His soul was about to leave the body ; 
but how would it get out? More and more anxiously rose the 
query, how could it get ouf? This uneasy state passed away, 
and he found that the soul had left his body. He himself stood 
beside the bed, looking at his own corpse, as if it were an old 
garment, laid aside as useless. His friends wept round the 
mortal covering, but could not see him. 

While he was reflecting upon this, he passed out of the room, 
he knew not how ; but presently he found himself floating over 
London, as if pillowed on a cloud borne by gentle breezes. Far 
below him, the busy multitude were hurrying hither and thither, 
like rats and mice scampering for crumbs. "Ah," thought the 
emancipated spirit, "how worse than foolish appears this 
feverish scramble. For what do they toil"? and what do they 
obtainr' 

London passed away beneath him, and he found himself 
floating over green fields and blooming gardens. How is it 
that I am borne through the air thought he 1 He looked, and 
saw a large purple wing ; and then he knew that he was 
carried by an angel. " Whither are we going 1 " said he. " To 
heaven," was the reply. He asked no more questions ; but 
remained in delicious quietude, as if they floated on a strain of 
music. At length they paused before a white marble temple 
of exquisite beauty. The angel lowered his flight, and gently 
placed him on the steps. " I thought you were taking me to 
heaven," said the spirit. " This is heaven," replied the angel. 
" This ! Assuredly this temple is of rare beauty ; but I could 
imagine just such built on earth." " Nevertheless, it is 
heaven," replied the angel. 

They entered a room just within the temple. A table stood 
in the centre, on which was a golden vase, filled with sparkling 
wine. " Drink of this," said the angel, ofiering the vase ; " for 
all who would know spiritual things, must first drink of 
spiritual wine." Scarcely had the ruby liquid wet his lips, 
when the Saviour of men stood before him, smiling most 
benignly. The spirit instantly dropped on his knees, and 
bowed down his head before him. The holy hands of the 
purest were folded over him in blessing ; and his voice said. 



LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 85 

•' You will see me seldom now ; hereafter you will see me more 
frequently. In the meantime, observe well the wonders of this 
temple ! " 

The sounds ceased. The spirit remained awhile in stillness. 
When he raised his head, the Saviour no longer appeared. He 
turned to ask the angel what this could mean ; but the angel 
had departed also. The soul stood alone, in its own unveiled 
presence ! " Why did the Holy One tell me to observe well 
the wonders of this temple ?" thought he. He looked slowly 
round. A sudden start of joy and wonder ! There, painted 
on the walls, in most marvellous beauty, stood recorded the 
whole of his spiritual life ! Every doubt, and every clear per- 
ception, every conflict and every victory, were there before 
him ! and though forgotten for years, he knew them at a 
glance. Even thus had a sunbeam pierced the darkest cloud, 
and thrown a rainbow bridge from the finite to the infinite ; 
thus had he slept peacefully in green valleys, by the side of 
running brooks ; and such had been his visions from the 
mountain tops. He knew them all. They had been always 
painted within the chambers of his soul ; but now, for the first 
time, was the veil removed. To those who think on sjDiritual 
things, this remarkable dream is too beautifully significant 
ever to be forgotten. 

" We shape ourselves the joy or fear 
Of which the coining hfe is made, 
And fill our future's atmosphere 
AVith sunshine or with shade. 

Still shall the soul around it call 

The shadows which it gathered here, 

And painted on the eternal wall 
The past shall reappear." 

I do not mean that the paintings, and statues, and houses, 
which a man has made on earth, will form his environment in 
the world of souls ; this would monopolise heaven for the 
wealthy and the cultivated. I mean that the spiritual com- 
bats and victories of our pilgrimage, write themselves there 
above, in infinite variations of form, colour, and tone; and 
thus shall every word and thought be brought into judgment. 
Of these things inscribed in heaven, who can tell what may be 
the action upon souls newly born into time ! Perhaps all 
lovely forms of art are mere ultimates of spiritual victories in 
individual souls. It may be that all genius derives its life 



86 LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 

from some holiness, which preceded it, in the attainment of 
another spirit. Who shall venture to assert that Beethoven 
could have produced his strangely powerful music, had not 
souls gone before him on earth, who with infinite struggling 
against temptation, aspired towards the highest, and in some 
degree realised their aspirations'? The music thus brought 
from the eternal world kindles still higher spiritual aspirations 
in mortals, to be realised in this life, and again written above, 
to inspire anew some gifted spirit, who stands a ready recipient 
in the far-off time. Upon this ladder, how beautifully the 
angels are seen ascending and descending ! 



LETTER XYIII. 

ORIGIN OF MANHATTAN — ANTIQUITIES OF NEW YORK — DAVID 
REYNOLDS — THE FISH AND RING. 

May 26, 1843. 

The Battery is growing charming again, now that Nature has 
laid aside her pearls, and put on her emeralds. The worst of it 
is, crowds are flocking there morning and evening; yet I am 
ashamed of that anti-social sentiment. It does my heart good 
to see the throng of children trundling their hoops and rolling 
on the grass; some, with tattered garments and dirty hands, 
come up from narrow lanes and stifled courts, and others with 
]Dale faces and weak limbs, the sickly occupants of heated 
drawing-rooms. But while I rejoice for their sakes, I cannot 
overcome my aversion to a multitude. It is so pleasant to run 
and jump, and throw pebbles, and make up faces at a friend, 
without having a platoon of well dressed people turn round and 
stare, and ask, ''Who is that strange woman, that acts so like a 
child?" Those who are truly enamoured of Nature, love to be 
alone with her. It is with them as with other lovers; the 
intrusion of strangers puts to flight a thousand sweet fancies, as 
fairies are sent to scamper at the approach of a mortal footstep. 
I rarely see the Battery, without thinking how beautiful it 
must have been before the white man looked upon it; when 
the tall, solemn forest, came down to the water's edge, and 
bathed in the moonlight stillness. The solitary Indian came 
out from the dense shadows, and stood in the glorious bright- 



LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 0/ 

ness. As he leaned thoughtfully on his bow, his crest of eagle's 
feathers waved slowly in the gentle evening breeze ; and voices 
from the world of spirits spoke into his heart, and stirred it 
with a troubled reference, which he felt, but could not compre- 
hend. To us, likewise, they are ever speaking through many 
voiced Nature; the soul, in its quiet hour, listens intently to 
the friendly entreaty, and strives to guess its meaning. All 
round us, on hill and dale, the surging ocean and the evening 
cloud, they have spread open the illuminated copy of their 
scriptures — revealing all things, if we could but learn and read 
the lancjuase ! 

The Indian did not think this ; but he felt it, even as I do. 
What have we gained by civilisation? It is a circling question, 
the beginning and end of which everywhere touch each other. 
One thing is certain ; they who pass through the ordeal of high 
civilisation, with garments unspotted by the crowd, will make 
far higher and holier angels — will love more, and know more, 
than they who went to their Father's house through the lonely 
forest-path. But looking at it, only in relation to this earth, 
there is much to be said in favour of that wild life of savage 
freedom, as well as much against it. It would be so pleasant 
to get rid of that nightmare of civilised life — '"'What will Mrs 
Smith say]" and "Do you suppose folks will think strange"?" It 
is true, that phantom troubles me but little; having snapped 
my fingers in its face years ago; it mainly vexes me chiefly by 
keeping me for ever from a full insight into the souls of others. 

Should I have learned more of the spirit's life, could I have 
wandered at midnight with Pocahontas, on this fair island of 
Manhattan? I should have at least learned all that; the soul 
of Nature's children might have lisped, and stammered in 
broken sentences, but it would not have muttered through a 
guise or under a mask. 

The very name of this island brings me back to ci\'ilisation 
by a most unpleasant path. It was in the autumn of 1609, 
that the celebrated Hudson first entered the magnificent river 
that now bears his name, in his adventurous yacht, the Half- 
Moon. The simple Indians were attracted by the red garments 
and bright buttons of the strangers; and as usual, their new 
friendship was soon sealed with the accursed "fire water." On 
the island, where the city now stands they had a great carouse ; 
and the Indians, in commemoration thereof named it Man- 
ahachtanienks, abbreviated, by rapid speech, to Manhattan. 



88 LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 

The meaning of it is, ^^The place where all got drunk together.^'' 
As I walk through the crowded streets, I am sometimes inclined 
to think the name is by no means misapplied at the present 
day. 

New York is beautiful now, with its broad rivers glancing 
in the sunbeams, its numerous islands, like fairy homes, and 
verdant headlands jutting out in graceful curves into its spacious 
harbour, where float the vessels of a hundred nations. But, oh ! 
how exceeding beautiful it must have been, when the thick 
forest hung all round Hudson's lonely bark ! When the wild 
deer bounded through paths where swine now grunt and grovel ! 
That chapter of the world's history was left unrecorded here 
below; but historians above have it on their tablets; for it 
wrote itself there in daguerreotype. 

Of times far less ancient, the vestiges are passing away; 
recalled sometimes by names bringing the most contradictory 
associations. Maiden Lane is now one of the busiest of com- 
mercial streets; the sky shut out with bricks and mortar; 
gutters on either side, black as the ancients imagined the rivers 
of hell ; thronged with sailors and draymen; and redolent of all 
wharf-like smells. Its name, significant of innocence and 
youthful beauty, was given in the olden time, when a clear, 
sparkling rivulet here flowed from an abundant spring, and the 
young Dutch girls went and came with baskets on their heads, 
to watch and bleach linen in the flowing stream, and on the 
verdant grass. 

Greenwich Street, which now rears its huge masses of brick, 
and shows only a long vista of dirt and paving stones, was once 
a beautiful beach, where boys and horses went in to bathe. In 
the middle of what is now the street, was a large rock, on which 
was built a rude summer-house, from which the merry bathers 
loved to jump, with splash and ringing shouts of laughter. 

I know not from what Pearl Street derives its name; but, 
in more senses than one, it is now obviously a "pearl cast before 
swine." 

The Bowery, with name so flowery, where the discord of a 
thousand wheels is overtopped by shrill street cries, was a line 
of orchards and mowing-land, in rear of the olden city, called in 
Dutch, the Bouwerys, or Farms ; and in popular phrase, " The 
high-road to Boston." In 1631, old Governor Stuyvesant 
bought the "Bouwerys," (now so immensely valuable in the 
market sense) for 6,400 guilders, or £1,066; houses, barn, six 



LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. S9 

COWS, two horses, and two young negro slaves, were included 
with the land. He built a Reformed Dutch church at his own 
expense, on his farm, within the walls of which was the family- 
vault. The church of St. Mark now occupies the same site, 
and on the outside wall stands his original grave-stone, thus 
inscribed : — ■ 

*'In this vault lies buried Petrus Stuyvesant, late Captain- 
General and Commander-in-Chief of Amsterdam, in New 
Netherland, now called New York, and the Dutch West India 
Islands. Died August, A.D. 1682, aged 80 years." 

A pear tree stands without the wall, still vigorous, though 
brought from Holland, and planted there by the governor 
himself. His family, still among the wealthiest of our city 
aristocracy, have preserved some curious memorials of their 
venerable Dutch ancestor. A portrait in armour, well-executed 
in Holland, probably while he was admiral there, represents 
him as a dark-complexioned man, with strong, bold features, 
and moustachios on the upper lip. Tliey likewise preserve the 
shirt in which he was christened ; of the finest Holland linen, 
edged with narrow lace. 

Near the Battery is an inclosure, called the Bowling-Green, 
where once stood a leaden statue of George II. During the 
revolution, the poor king was pulled down and dragged 
irreverently through the streets, to be melted into bullets for 
the war. He would have deemed this "worse than being 

' ' Turned to clay, 
To stop a hole to keep the wind away." 

However, the purpose to which his image was applied, would 
probably have been less abhorrent to him, than it would be to 
the apostles, to know the uses to which they are applied by 
modern Christians. 

The antiquities of New York ! In this new and ever-changing 
country, what ridiculous associations are aroused by that 
word ! For us, tradition has no desolate arches, no dim and 
cloistered aisles. People change their abodes so often, that, as 
Washington Irving wittily suggests, the very ghosts, if they are 
disposed to keep up an ancient custom, don't no where to call 
upon them. 

This newness, combined with all surrounding social influences, 
tends to make us an iiTeverential people. It was the frequent 
remark of Mr. Combe, that of all nations, whose heads he had 



90 LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 

e^er an opportunity to observe, the Americans had the organ of 
veneration the least developed. No wonder that it is so. 
Instead of moss-grown ruins, we have trim brick houses; instead 
of cathedrals, with their "dim, religious light," we have new 
meeting-houses, built on speculation, with four-and-twenty 
windows on each side, and at both ends, for the full enjoyment 
of cross-lights ; instead of the dark and echoing recesses of the 
cloister, we have ready-made coifins in the shop windows; 
instead of the rainbow halo of poetic philosophy, we have 
Franklin's maxims for ''Poor Kichard; and in lieu of kings 
divinely ordained, or governments heaven-descended, we have 
administrations turned in and out of office at every whirl of the 
ballot box. 

"This democratic experiment will prove a failure," said an 
old-fashioned federalist; "before fifty years are ended, we shall 
be governed by a king in this country." And where will you 
get the blood?' inquired an Irishman, with earnest simplicity; 
"sure you will have to send over the water to get some of 
the blood." Whereupon irreverent listeners laughed outright, 
and asked wherein a king's blood differed from that of an Irish 
ditch-digger. The poor fellow was puzzled. Could he have 
comprehended the question, I would have asked, "And if we 
could import the kingly blood, how could we import the 
sentiment of loyalty?" 

The social world, as well as the world of matter, must have 
its centrifugal as well as its centripetal force ; and we Americans 
must perform that office; an honourable and useful one it is, 
yet not the most beautiful, nor in all respects the most desii'able. 
Keverence is the highest quality of man's nature; and that 
individual, or nation, which has it slightly developed, is so far 
unfortunate. It is a strong spiritual instinct, and seeks to 
form channels for itself where none exists; thus Americans, 
in the dearth of other objects to worship, fall to worshipping 
themselves. 

Now don't laugh, if you can help it, at what I bring forth as 
antiquities. Just keep the Parthenon, the Alhambra, and the 
ruins of Melrose out of your head, if you j^lease ; and pay due 
respect to my American antiquities. At the corner of Bayard 
and Bowery you will see a hotel, called the North American; 
and on the top thereof you may spy a wooden image of a lad 
with ragged knees and elbows, whose mother doesn't know 
they're out. That image commemorates the history of a 



LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 91 

Yankee boy, by tlie name of David Reynolds. Some fifty years 
ago, he came here at the age of twelve or fourteen, without a 
copper in his pocket. I think he had run away; at all events, 
he w^as alone and ' friendless. Weary and hungry, he leaned 
against a tree, where the hotel now stands; every eye looked 
strange upon him, and he felt utterly forlorn and disheartened. 
While he was trying to devise some honest means to obtain 
food, a gentleman inquired for a boy to carry his trunk to the 
wharf; and the Yankee eagerly ofiered his services. For this 
job he received twenty-five cents; most of which he spent in 
purchasing fruit to sell again. He stationed himself by the 
friendly tree, where he had first obtained employment, and 
soon disposed of his little stdck to advantage. With increased 
capital he increased his stock. He must have managed his 
business with Yankee shrewdness, or perhaps he was a cross of 
Scotch and Yankee ; for he soon established a respectable fruit 
stall under the tree; and then he bought a small shop, that 
stood within its shade; and then he j^nrchased a lot of land, 
including several buildings round; and finally he pulled down 
the old shop, and the old houses, and built the large hotel 
which now stands there. The old tree seemed to him like home. 
There he had met with his first good luck in a strange city; 
and from day to day, and month to month, those friendly 
boughs had still looked down upon his rising fortune. He 
would not desert that which had stood by him in the dreary 
days of poverty and trial. It must be removed, to make room 
for the big mansion ; but it should not be destroyed. From its 
beloved trunk he caused his image to be carved, as a memento 
of his own forlorn beginnings, and his grateful recollections. 
That it might tell a truthful tale, and remind him of early 
struggles, the rich citizen of New York caused it to be carved, 
with ragged trowsers, and jacket out at elbows. 

There is a curious relic of by-gone days over the door of a 
public house in Hudson Street, between Hamersley Street and 
Greenwich Bank, of which few guess the origin. It is the sign 
of a fish, with a ring in its mouth. Tradition says, that in the 
year 1743, a young nobleman, disguised as a sailor, won the 
heart of a beautiful village maiden, on the western coast of 
England. It is the old story of woman's fondness and woman's 
faith. She trusted him, and he deceived her. At their parting, 
they exchanged rings of betrothal. Time passed on, and she 
heard no more from liim; till at last there came the insulting 



92 LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 

offer of money, as a remuneration for her ruined happiness, and 
support for herself and child. Some time after she learned, 
to her great surprise, that he was a nobleman of high rank, in 
the royal navy, and that his ship was lying near the coast. 
She sought his vessel, and conjured him by all recollections of 
her confiding love, and of his own earnest protestations, to do 
her justice. At first, he was moved; but her pertinacity vexed 
him, until he treated her with angry scorn, for presuming to 
think she could ever become his wife. "God forgive you," 
said the weeping beauty; "let us exchange our rings again; 
give me back the one I gave you. It was my mother's; and I 
could not have parted with it to any but my betrothed husband. 
There is your money; not a penny of it will I ever use; it 
cannot restore my good name, or heal my broken heart. I 
will labour to support your child." In a sudden fit of anger, 
he threw the ring into the sea, saying, "When you can recover 
that bauble from the fishes, you may expect to be the wife of a 
British nobleman. I give you my word of honour to marry 
you then, and not till then." 

Sadly and wearily the maiden walked home with her poor 
old father. On their way, the old man bought a fish that was 
offered him, just taken from the sea. When the fish was 
prepared for supper that night, lo! the ring was found in its 
stomach ! 

When informed of this fact, the young nobleman was so 
strongly impressed with the idea that it was a direct inter- 
position of Providence, that he did not venture to break the 
promise he had given. He married the village belle, and they 
lived long and happily together. When he died, an obelisk 
was erected to his memory, surmounted by the efiigy of a fish 
with a ring in its mouth. Such a story was of course sung, 
until it became universal tradition. Some old emigrant brought 
it over to this country; and there in Hudson Street hang the 
fish and the ring, to commemorate the loves of a past century. 

Now laugh if you will; I think I have made out quite a 
respectable collection of American antiquities. If I seem to 
you at times to look back too lovingly on the past, do not 
understand me as quarrelling with the present. Sometimes, it 
is true, I am tempted to say of the nineteenth century, as the 
exile from New Zealand did of the huge scramble in London 
Streets, "Me no like London. Shove me about." 

Often, too, I am disgusted to see men trying to pull down 



LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 93 

the false, not for love of the true, but for tlieir own selfish 
purposes. I gratefully acknowledge my own age and country 
as pre-eminently marked by activity and progress. Brave 
spirits are everywhere at work for freedom, peace, temperance, 
and education. Everywhere the walls of caste and sect are 
melting before them; everywhere dawns the golden twilight of 
universal love. Many are working for all these things, who 
have the dimmest insight into the infinity of their relations, 
and the eternity of their results; some, perchance, could they 
perceive the relation that each bears to all, would eagerly strive 
to undo what they are now doing; but luckily, heart and hand 
often work for better things that the head wots of. 



LETTER XIX. 

AMIMAL MAGNETISM — THE SOUL WATCHING ITS OWN BODY — AN 
ANECDOTE OF SECOND SIGHT. 

June 2, 1842. 

You seem very curious to learn what I think of recent pheno- 
mena in animal magnetism, or mesmerism, w^hich you have 
described to me. They have probably impressed your mind 
more than my own; because I was ten years ago convinced 
that animal magnetism was destined to produce great changes 
in the science of medicine, and in the whole philosophy of 
spirit and matter. The reports of French physicians, guarded 
as they were on every side by the scepticism that characterises 
their profession and their country, contained proof enough to 
convince me that animal magnetism was not a nine days* 
wonder. That there has been a great deal of trickery, collusion, 
and imposture, in connexion with this subject, is obvious 
enough. Its very nature renders it peculiarly liable to this ; 
whatsoever relates to spiritual existence cannot be explained 
by the laws of matter, and therefore becomes at once a power- 
ful temptation to deception. For this reason, I have taken too 
little interest in public exhibitions of animal magnetism ever 
to attend one; I should always observe them with distrust. 

But it appears to me that nothing can be more unphilosophic 
than the ridicule attached to a belief in mesmerism. Pheno- 
mena of the most extraordinary character have occurred, proved 



94 LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 

by a cloud of witnesses. If these things have really happened, 
(as thousands of intelligent and rational people testify), they 
are governed by laws as fixed and certain as the laws that govern 
matter. We call them miracles, simply because we do not 
understand the causes that produce them; and what do we 
fully understand? Our knowledge is exceedingly imperfect, 
even with regard to the laws of matter; though the world has 
had the experience of several thousand years to help its investi- 
gations. We cannot see that the majestic oak lies folded up 
in the acorn; still less can we tell how it came there. We 
have observed that a piece of wood decays in the damp ground, 
while a nut generates and becomes a tree; and we say it is 
because there is a principle of vitality in the nut, which is not 
in the wood: but explain, if you can, what is a principle of 
vitality, and how came it in the acorn? 

They w^ho reject the supernatural, claim to be the only 
philosophers in these days, when, as Peter Parley says, 
"every little child knows all about the rainbow." Satisfied 
with the tangible inclosures of their own penfold, these are 
not aware that Avhosoever did know all about the rainbow, 
would know enough to make a world. Supernatural simply 
means above the natural. Between the laws that govern the 
higher and the lower, there is doubtless the most perfect har- 
mony; and this we should perceive and understand, if we had 
the enlarged faculties of angels. 

There is something exceedingly arrogant and short-sighted 
in the pretensions of those who ridicule everything not cap- 
able of being proved to the senses. They are like a man who 
holds a penny close to his eye, and then denies that there 
is a glorious firmament of stars, because he cannot see them. 
Carlyle gives the following sharp rebuke to this annoying class 
of thinkers: — "Thou wilt have no mystery and mysticism? 
Wilt walk through the world by the sunshine of what thou 
callest logic? Thou wilt explain all, account for all, or believe 
nothing of it? Nay, thou wilt even attempt laughter! 

"Whoso recognises the unfathomable, all-pervading domain 
of mystery, which is every where under our feet and among 
our hands; to whom the universe is an oracle and a temple, as 
well as kitchen and cattle-stall — he shall be called a mystic, 
and delirious ! To him thou, with snifiing charity, wilt pro- 
trusively profier thy hand lamp, and shriek, as one injured, 
when he kicks his foot through it. Wert thou not born? 



LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 95 

Wilt thou not die? Explain me all this — or do one of two 
things: retire into private places with thy foolish cackle; or, 
what were better, give it up; and weep not that the reign of 
wonder is done, and God's world all disembellished and prosaic, 
but that thou thyself art hitherto a sand-blind pedant." 

But if there be any truth in the wonders of animal mag- 
netism, why has not the world heard of them before 1 asks the 
inquirer. The world did hear of them, centuries ago ; and from 
time to time they have re-appeared, and arrested local and tem- 
porary attention ; but not being understood, and not being con- 
veyed to the human mind through the medium of belief, they 
were soon rejected as fabulous stories, or idle superstitions; no 
one thought of examining them, as phenomena governed by 
laws which regulate the universe. 

It is recorded that when the plague raged in Athens, in 
the days of Plato, many recovered from it with a total oblivion 
of all outward things ; they seemed to themselves to be living 
among other scenes, which were as real to them as the material 
world was to others. The wisdom of angels, perchance, j)er- 
ceived it to be far more real. 

Ancient history records that a learned Persian Magus who 
resided among the mountains that overlooked Taoces, recovered 
from the plague with a perpetual oblivion of all outward forms, 
while he often had knowledge of the thoughts passing in the 
minds of those around him. If an unknown scroll were placed 
before him, he would read it though a brazen shield were in- 
terposed between him and the parchment ; and if figures were 
drawn on the water, he at once recognised the forms, of which 
no visible trace remained. 

In Taylor's Plato, mention is made of one Clearchus, who 
related an experiment tried in the presence of Aristotle and his 
disciples at the Lyceum. He declares that a man, by means 
of moving a wand up and down, over the body of a lad, "led 
the soul out of it," and left the form perfectly rigid and 
senseless; when he afterwards led the soul back, it told, with 
wonderful accuracy, all that had been said and done. 

This reminds me of a singular circumstance which happened 
to a venerable friend of mine. I had it from her own lips. 
She was taken suddenly ill one day, and swooned. To all 
appearance, she was entirely lifeless ; insomuch that her friends 
feared she was really dead. A physician was sent for and a 
variety of experiments tried, before there were any symptoms 



96' LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 

of returning animation. She herself was merely aware of a 
dizzy and peculiar sensation, and then she found herself stand- 
ing by her own lifeless body, watching all their efforts to 
resuscitate it. It seemed to her strange, and she was too 
confused to know whether she were in that body or out of it. 
In the meantime, her anxious friends could not make the 
slightest impression on the rigid form, either by sight, hearing, 
touch, taste, or smell; it was to all appearance dead. The five 
outward gates of entrance to the soul were shut and barred. 
Yet when the body revived, she told everything that had been 
done in the room, every word that had been said, and the very 
expression of their countenances. The soul had stood by all 
the while, and observed what was done to the body. How 
did it see when the eyes were closed, like a corpse 1 Answer 
that before you disbelieve a thing because you cannot under- 
stand it. Could I comprehend how the simplest violet came 
into existence, I too would urge that plea. It were as wise for 
a child of four years old to deny that the planets move round 
the sun, because its infant mind connot receive the explanation, 
as for you and me to ridicule the arcana of the soul's connexion 
with the body, because we cannot comprehend them, in this 
imperfect state of existence. Beings so ignorant should be 
more humble and reverential; this frame of mind has no affinity 
whatever with the greedy superstition that is eager to believe 
everything, merely because it is wonderful. 

It is deemed incredible that people in magnetic aleep can 
describe objects at a distance, and scenes which they never 
looked upon while waking; yet nobody doubts the common 
form of somnambulism, called sleep-walking. You may singe 
the eye-lashes of a sleep-walker with a candle, and he will 
perceive neither you nor the light. His eyes have no expression ; 
they are like those of a corpse. Yet he will walk out in the 
dense darkness, avoiding chairs, tables, and all other obstruc- 
tions; he will tread the ridge-pole of a roof, far more securely 
than he could in a natural state, at mid-day; he will harness 
horses, pack wood, make shoes, &c., all in the darkness of 
midnight. Can you tell me with what eyes he sees to do these 
things'? and what light directs him] If you cannot, be humble 
enough to acknowledge that God governs the universe by many 
laws incomprehensible to you ; and be wise enough to conclude 
that these phenomena are not deviations from the divine order 
of things, but occasional manifestations of principles always at 



LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 97 

work in the great scale of being, made visible at times, by 
causes as yet unrevealecl. 

Allowing very largely for falsehood, trickery, superstitious 
fear, and stimulated imagination, I still believe most fully that 
many things now rejected as foolish superstitions, will hereafter 
take their appropriate place in a new science of spiritual 
philosophy. From the progress of animal magnetism, there may 
perhajDS be evolved much that will throw light upon old stories 
of oracles, witchcraft, and second sight. A large portion of 
these stories are doubtless falsehoods, fabricated for the most 
selfish and mischievous purposes; others may be an honest 
record of things as they actually seemed to the narrator. 
Those which are true assuredly have a cause, and are mir- 
aculous only as our whole being is miraculous. Is not life 
itself the highest miracle? Everybody can tell you what it 
does, but where is the wise man who can explain what it is? 
When did the infant receive that mysterious gift? Whence 
did it come? Whither does it go, when it leaves the body? 

Scottish legends abound with instances of second sight, often- 
times supported by a formidable array of evidence; but I have 
met only one individual who w^as the subject of such a story. 

She is a woman of plain practical sense, very unimaginative, 
intelligent, extremely well-informed, and as truthful as the sun. 
I tell the story as she told it to me. One of her relatives was 
seized with rapid consumption. He had for some weeks been 
perfectly resigned to die; but one morning, when she called 
upon him, she found his eyes brilliant, his cheeks flushed with 
an unnatural bloom, and his mind full of belief that he should 
recover health. He talked eagerly of voyages he would take, 
and of the renovating influence of warmer climes. She listened 
to him with sadness; for she was well aquainted with his 
treacherous disease, and in all these things she saw symptoms 
of approaching death. She said this to her mother and sisters, 
when she returned home. In the afternoon of the same day, 
as she sat sewing in the usual family circle, she accidentally 
looked up — and gave a sudden start, which immediately 
attracted attention and inquiry. She replied, "Don't you see 
cousin ?" 

They thought she had been dreaming; but she said, "I 
certainly am not asleep. It is strange you do not see him; he 
is there." The next thought was that she was seized with 
sudden insanity ; but she assured them that she never was more 

H 



98 LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 

rational in her life : that she could not account for the circum- 
stance, any more than they could ; but her cousin certainly was 
there, and looking at her with a very pleasant countenance. 
Her mother tried to turn it off as a delusion ; but nevertheless, 
she was so much impressed by it, that she looked at her watch, 
and immediately sent to inquire how the invalid did. The 
messenger returned with news that he was dead, and had died 
at that moment. 

My friend told me that at first she saw only the bust; but 
gradually the whole form became visible, as if some imperceptible 
cloud, or veil, had slowly rolled away; the invisible veil again 
rose, till only the bust remained ; and then that vanished. 

She said the vision did not terrify her at the time ; it simply 
perplexed her, as a thing incomprehensible. Why she saw it, 
she could explain no better than why her mother and sisters 
did not see it. She simply told it to me just as it appeared to 
her; as distinct and real as any other individual in the room. 

Men would not be afraid to see spirits if they were better 
acquainted with their own. It is because we live so entirely 
in the body that we are startled at a revelation of the soul. 

Animal magnetism will come out from all the shams and 
quackery that have made it ridiculous, and will yet be acknow- 
ledged as an important aid to science, an additional proof of 
immortality, and a means, in the hands of Divine Providence, 
to arrest the progress of materialism. 

For myself, I am deeply thankful for any agency that even 
momentarily blows aside the thick veil between the finite and 
the infinite, and gives me never so hurried and imperfect a 
glimpse of realities which lie beyond this valley of shadows. 



LETTER XX. 

THE BIRDS ANECDOTE OF PETION's DAUGHTER — THE BIRD, 

THE SNAKE, AND THE WHITE ASH STORY OF MY SWALLOWS 

THE SPANISH PARROT. 

June 9, 1842. 

There is nothing which makes me feel the imprisonment of a 
city like the absence of birds. Blessings on the little warblers ! 
Lovely types are they of all winged and graceful thoughts. 



LETTERS FROM XEW YORK. 99 

Dr. Follen used to say, "I feel dependent for a vigorous and 
hopeful spirit on now and then a kind word, the loud laugh of 
a child, or the silent greeting of a flower." Fully do I sym- 
pathise with this utterance, of his gentle and loving spirit; 
but more than the benediction of the flower, more perhaps than 
even the mirth of childhood, is the clear, joyous note of the bird, 
a refreshment to my soul. 

* ' The birds ! the birds of summer hours 
They bring a gush of glee, 
To the child among the fragrant flowers, 

To the sailor on the sea. 
We hear their thrilling voices 
In their swift and airy flight. 
And the inmost heart rejoices 
With a calm and pure delight. 

Amid the morning's fragrant dew, 

Amidst the mists of even. 
They warble on, as if they drew 

Their music down from Heaven. 
And when their holy anthems 

Come pealing through the air, 
Our hearts leap forth to meet them, 

With a blessing and a prayer." 

But alas ! like the free voices of fresh youth, they come not on 
the city air. Thus should it be ; where mammon imprisons all 
thoughts and feelings that would fly upward, their winged types 
should be in cages, too. Walk down Mulberry Street, and you 
may see, in one small room, hundreds of little feathered 
songsters, each hopj^ting about restlessly in his gilded and 
garlanded cage, like a dyspeptic merchant in his marble mansion. 
I always turn my head away when I pass ; for the sight of the 
little captives goes through my heart like an arrow. The 
darling little creatures have such visible delight in freedom — 

"In the joyous song they sing; 
In the liquid air they cleave ; 
In the sunshine; in the shower; 
In the nests they weave." 

I seldom see a bird encaged without being reminded of 
Petion, a truly great man, the popular idol of Haiti, as Wash- 
ington is of the United States. 

While Petion administered the government of the island, 
some distinguished foreigner sent his little daughter, a beautiful 
bird, in a very handsome cage. The child was delighted, and 



100 LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 

with great exultation exhibited the present to her father. " It 
is, indeed, very beautiful, my daughter," said he; "but it 
makes my heart ache to look at it. I hope you will never show 
it to me again." 

With great astonishment, she inquired his reasons. He 
replied, "When this island was called St. Domingo, we were 
all slaves. It makes me think of it to look at that bird; for 
he is a slave." 

The little girl's eyes filled with tears, and her lips quivered, 
as she exclaimed, "Why, father! he has such a large, handsome 
cage; and as much as ever he can eat and drink." 

"And would you be a slave," said he, "if you could live in 
a great house, and be fed on frosted cake?" 

After a moment's thought, the child began to say, half 
reluctantly, "Would he be happier, if I opened the door of his 
cage'?" "He would be free!" was the emphatic reply. With- 
out another word, she took the cage to the open window, and 
a moment after, she saw her prisoner playing with the humming- 
birds among the honey-suckles. 

One of the most remarkable cases of instinctive knowledge in 
birds was often related by my grandfather who witnessed the 
fact with his own eyes. He was attracted to the door one 
summer-day, by a troubled twittering, indicating distress and 
terror. A bird, who had built her nest in a tree near tlie door, 
was flying back and forth with the utmost speed, uttering 
wailing cries as she went. He was at first at a loss to account 
for her strange movements; but they were soon explained by 
the sight of a snake slowly winding up the tree. 

Animal magnetism was then unheard of; and whosoever had 
dared to mention it, would doubtless have been hung on 
Witch's Hill, without benefit of clergy. Nevertheless, marvel- 
lous and altogether unaccountable stories had been told of the 
snake's power to charm birds. The popular belief was that the 
serpent charmed the bird by looking steadily at it : and that 
such a sympathy was thereby established, that if the snake were 
struck, the bird felt the blow, and writhed under it. 

These traditions excited my grandfather's curiosity to watch 
the progress of things; but, being a humane man, he resolved 
to kill the snake before he had a chance to despoil the nest. 
The distressed mother meanwhile continued her rapid move- 
ments and troubled cries; and he soon discovered that she went 
and came continually, with something in her bill, from one 



LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 101 

particular tree — a wliite ash. The snake wound his way up; 
but the instant his head came near the nest, his folds relaxed, 
and he fell to the ground rigid and apparently lifeless. My 
grandfather madefsure of his death by cutting off his head, and 
then mounted the tree to examine into the mystery. The 
snug little nest was filled with eggs, and covered with leaves 
of the white ash ! 

That little bird knew, if my readers do not, that contact with 
the white ash is deadly to a snake. This is no idle superstition, 
but a veritable fact in history. The Indians are aware of it, 
and twist garlands of white ash leaves about their ankles, as a 
protection against rattlesnakes. Slaves often take the same 
precaution when they travel through swamps and forests, 
guided by the north star; or to the cabin of some poor white 
man, who teaches them to read and write by the light of pine 
splinters, and receives his pay in "massa's" corn or tobacco. 

I have never heard any explanation of the efiect produced 
by the white ash; but I know that settlers in the wilderness 
like to have these trees round their log houses, being convinced 
that no snake will voluntarily come near them. When touched 
with the boughs, they are said to grow suddenly rigid, with 
strong convulsions ; after a while they slowdy recover, but seem 
sickly for some time. 

The following well authenticated anecdote has something 
wonderfully human about it: 

A parrot had been caught young, and trained by a Spanish 
lady, who sold it to an English sea-captain. For a time the 
bird seemed sad among the fogs of England, where birds and 
men all spoke to her in a foreign tongue. By degrees, however, 
she learned the language, forgot her Spanish phrases, and 
seemed to feel at home. Years passed on, and found })retty 
poll the pet of the captain's family. At last her brilliant 
feathers began to turn grey with age; she could take no food 
but soft pulp, and had not strength enough to mount her perch. 
But no one had the heart to kill the old favourite, she was 
entwined with so many pleasant household recollections. She 
had been some time in this feeble condition, when a Spanish 
gentleman called one day to see her master. It was the first 
time she heard the language for many years. It probably 
brought back to memory the scenes of her youth in that 
beautiful region of vines and sunshine. She spread forth her 
wings with a wild scream of joy, rapidly ran over the Spanish 



102 LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 

phrases, which she had not uttered for years, and fell down 
dead. 

There is something strangely like reason in this. It makes 
one want to know whence comes the bird's soul, and whither 
goes it. 

There are different theories on the subject of instinct. Some 
consider it a special revelation to each creature; others believe 
it is founded on traditions handed down among animals, from 
generation to generation, and is therefore a matter of education. 
My own observation, two years ago, tends to confirm the latter 
theory. Two barn-swallows came into our wood-shed in the 
spring time. Their busy, earnest twitterings led me at once to 
suspect that they were looking out a building-spot; but as a 
carpenter's bench was under the window, and frequent hammer- 
ing, sawing, and planing were going on, I had little hope they 
would choose a location under our roof. To my surprise, 
however, they soon began to build in the crotch of a beam, over 
the open doorway. I was delighted, and spent more time 
watching them than "penny-wise" people would have approved. 
It was, in fact, a beautiful little drama of domestic love. The 
mother-bird was so busy, and so important; and her mate was 
so attentive ! Never did any newly-married couple take more 
satisfaction with their first nicely arranged drawer of baby- 
clothes, than these did in fashioning their little woven cradle. 

The father-bird scarcely ever left the side of the nest. There 
he was, all day, twittering in tones that were most obviously 
the outpourings of love. Sometimes he would bring in a straw, 
or a hair, to be inwoven in the precious little fabric. One day 
my attention was arrested by a very unusual twittering, and I 
saw him circling round with a large downy feather in his bill. 
He bent over the unfinished nest, and offered it to his mate 
with the most graceful and loving air imaginable; and when 
she put up her mouth to take it, he poured forth such a gush 
of gladsome sound! It seemed as if pride and affection had 
swelled his heart, till it was almost too big for his little bosom. 
The whole transaction was the prettiest piece of fond coquetry, 
on both sides, that it was ever my good luck to witness. 

It was evident that the father-bird had formed correct 
opinions on "the woman question;" for during the process of 
incubation he volunteered to perform his share of household 
duty. Three or four times a day would he, with coaxing 
twitterings, persuade his patient mate to fly abroad for food; 



LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 103 

and the moment she left the eggs, he would take the maternal 
station, and give a loud alarm whenever cat or dog came about 
the premises. He certainly performed the office with far less 
ease and grace than she did; it was something in the style of 
an old bachelor tending a babe; but nevertheless it showed 
that his heart was kind, and his principles correct, concerning 
division of labour. When the young ones came forth he 
pursued the same equalizing policy, and brought at least half 
the food for his greedy little family. 

But when they became old enough to fly, the veriest misan- 
thrope would have laughed to watch their manoeuvres! Such 
chirping and twittering! Such diving down from the nest, and 
flying up again ! Such wheeling round in circles, talking to 
the young ones all the while! Such clinging to the sides of 
the sheds with their sharp claws, to show the timid little 
fledgelings that there was no need of falling ! 

For three days all this was carried on with increasing activity. 
It was obviously an infant flying school. But all their talking 
and fussing was of no avail. The little downy things looked 
down, and then looked up, and alarmed at the infinity of space, 
sunk down into the nest again. At length the parents grew 
impatient, and summoned their neighbours. As I was picking 
up chips one day, I found my head encircled with a swarm of 
swallows. They flew up to the nest, and chatted away to the 
young ones; they clung to the walls, looking back to tell how 
the thing was done; they dived, and wheeled, and balanced, 
and floated, in a manner perfectly beautiful to behold. 

The pupils were evidently much excited. They jumped up 
on the edge of the nest, and twitteied, and shook their feathers, 
and waved their wings; and then hopped back again, saying, 
"It's pretty sport, but we can't do it." 

Three times the neighbours came in and repeated their 
graceful lessons. The third time, two of the young birds gave 
a sudden plunge downward, and then fluttered and hopped, 
till they alighted on a small upright log. And oh, such praises 
as were warbled by the whole troop ! The air was filled with 
their joy! Some were flying round, swift as a ray of light; 
others were perched on the hoe-handle, and the teeth of the 
rake; multitudes clung to the wall, after the fashion of their 
pretty kind; and two were swinging, in most graceful style, 
on a pendant hoop. Never while memory lasts, shall I forget 
that swallow party; I have frolicked with blessed Nature 



104 LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 

mucli and often ; but this, above all her gambols, spoke into my 
inmost heart, like the glad voices of little children. That 
beautiful family continued to be our playmates, until the falling 
leaves gave token of approaching winter. For some time, the 
little ones came home regularly to their nest at night. I was 
ever on the watch to welcome them, and count that none were 
missing. A sculptor might have taken a lesson in his art, 
from those little creatures perched so gracefully on the edge of 
their clay-built cradle, fast asleep, with heads hidden under 
their folded wings. Their familiarity was w^onderful. If I 
hung my gown on a nail, I found a little swallow perched on 
the sleeve. If I took a nap in the afternoon, my waking eyes 
were greeted by a swallow on the bed-post; in the summer 
twilight, they flew about the sitting-room in search of flies, and 
sometimes lighted on chairs and tables. I almost thought they 
knew how much I loved them. But at last they flew away to 
more genial skies, with a whole troop of relations and neigh- 
bours. It was a deep pain to me, that I should never know 
them from other swallows, and that they would have no recol- 
lection of me. We had lived so friendly together, that I 
wanted to meet them in another world, if I could not in this ; 
and I wept, as a child weeps at its first grief. 

There was somewhat, too, in their beautiful life of loving 
freedom which was a reproach to me. Why was not my life 
as happy and as graceful as theirs? Because they were 
innocent, confiding, and unconscious, they fulfilled all the laws 
of their being without obstruction. 

"Inward, inward to thy heart, 

Kindly Nature, take me ; 
Lovely, even as thou art, 

Full of loving, make me. 
Thou knowest not of death-cold forms, 

Knowest nought of httleness ; 
Lifeful truth thy being warms. 

Majesty and earnestness." 

The old Greeks observed a beautiful festival, called "The 
Welcome of the Swallows." When these social birds first 
returned in the spring-time, the children went about in pro- 
cession, with music and garlands; receiving presents at every 
door, where they stopped to sing a welcome to the swallows, in 
in that graceful old language, so melodious even in its ruins, 
that the listener feels as if the brilliant azure of Grecian skies, 



LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 105 

the breezy motion of their olive groves, and the gush of their 
silvery fountains, had all passed into a monument of liquid and 
harmonious sounds. 



LETTER XXI. 

STATEN ISLAND — SAILOR's SNUG HARBOUR. 

June 16, 1842. 

If you want refreshment for the eye, and the luxury of pure 
breezes, go to Staten Island. This beautiful little spot, which 
lies so gracefully on the waters, was sold by the Indians to the 
Dutch, in 1657, for ten shirts, thirty pairs of stockings, ten 
guns, thirty bars of lead for balls, thirty pounds of powder, 
twelve coats, two pieces of duffel, thirty kettles, thirty hatchets, 
twenty hoes, and a case of knives and awls. This was then 
considered a fair compensation for a tract eighteen miles long, 
and seven broad; and compared with most of our business 
transactions with the Indians, it will not appear illiberal. The 
facilities for fishing, the abundance of oysters, the pleasantness 
of the situation, and old associations, all endeared it to the 
natives. They lingered about the island, like reluctant ghosts, 
until 1670; when, being urged to depart, they made a new 
requisition of four hundred fathoms of wampum, and a large 
number of guns and axes; a demand which was very wisely 
complied with, for the sake of a final ratification of the treaty. 
On this island is a quarantine ground, unrivalled for the 
airiness of its situation and the comforts and cleanliness of 
its arrangements. Of the foreigners from all nations which 
flood our shores, an immense proportion here take their first 
footstep on American soil; and judging from the welcome 
Nature gives them, they might well believe they had arrived 
in Paradise. From the high grounds, three hundred feet 
above the level of the sea, may be seen a beautiful variety of 
land and sea, of rural quiet, and city sj^lendour. Long Island 
spreads before you her vernal forests, and fields of golden grain ; 
the North and East rivers sparkle in the distance; and the 
magnificent Hudson is seen flowing on in joyful freedom. The 
city itself seems clean and bright in the distance — its de- 
formities hidden, and its beauties exaggerated, like the fame 



106 LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 

of far-off heroes. When the sun shines on its steeples, 
windows, and roofs of glittering tin, it is as if the Fire Spirits 
had suddenly created a city of fairy palaces. And when the 
still shadows creep over it, and the distant lights shine like 
descended constellations, twinkling to the moanrng music of 
the sea, there is something oppressive in its solemn beauty. 
Then comes the golden morning light, as if God suddenly un- 
veiled his glory! There on the bright waters float a thousand 
snowy sails, like a troop of beautiful sea birds; and imagination, 
strong in morning freshness, flies off through the outlet to the 
distant sea, and circles all the globe with its wreath of flowers. 

Amid these images of joy, reposes the quarantine burying- 
ground ; bringing sad association, like the bass-note in a music- 
box. How many who leave their distant homes, full of golden 
visions, come here to take their first and last look of the 
promised land. What to them are all the fair, broad, acres of 
this new world ] They need but the narrow heritage of a 
grave. But every soul that goes hence, apart from friends 
and kindred, carries with it a whole unrevealed epic of joy 
and sorrow, of gentle sympathies and passion's fiery depths. 
O, how rich in more than Shakspearean beauty would be the 
literature of that quarantine ground, if all the images that 
pass in procession before those dying eyes, would write them- 
selves in daguerreotype! 

One of the most interesting places on this island, is the 
Sailor's Snug Harbour. A few years ago, a gentleman by the 
name of Kandall, left a small farm, that rented for two or 
three hundred dollars, at the corner of Eleventh Street and 
Broadway, for the benefit of old and worn-out sailors. This 
property increased in value, until it enabled the trustees to 
purchase a farm on Staten Island, and erect a noble stone 
edifice, as a hospital for disabled seamen; with an annual 
income of nearly thirty thousand dollars. The building has a 
very handsome exterior, and is large, airy, and convenient. 
The front door opens into a spacious hall, at the extremity of 
which flowers and evergreens are arranged one above another, 
like the terrace of a conservatory; and from the entries above, 
you look down into this pretty nook of "greenery." The 
whole aspect of things is extremely pleasant — with the ex- 
ception of the sailors themselves. There is a sort of torpid 
resignation in their countenance and movement, painful to 
witness. They reminded me of what some one said of the 



LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 107 

Greenwich pensioners: "tliey seemed to be waiting for death." 
No outward comfort seemed wanting, except the constant 
prospect of the sea: but they stood alone in the world — no 
wives, no children. Connected by no link with the ever-active 
present, a monotonous future stretched before them, made 
more dreary by its contrast with the keen excitement and 
ever-shifting variety of their past life of peril and pleasure. I 
have always thought too little provision was made for this 
lassitude of the mind, in most benevolent institutions. Men 
accustomed to excitement, cannot do altogether without it. It 
is a necessity of nature, and should be ministered to in all 
innocent forms. Those poor old tars should have sea-songs 
and instrumental music, once in a while, to stir their sluggish 
blood ; and a feast might be given on great occasions, to younger 
sailors in temperance boarding-houses, that the past might have 
a chance to hear from the present. We perform but a half 
charity, when we comfort the body and leave the soul desolate. 

Within the precincts of the city, too, are pleasant and safe 
homes provided for sailors ; spacious, well-ventilated, and 
supplied with libraries and museums. 

After all, this nineteenth century, with all its turmoil 
and clatter, has some lovely features about it ! If evil spreads 
with unexampled rapidity, good is abroad, too, with miraculous 
and omnipresent activity. Unless we are struck by the tail of 
a comet, or swallowed by the sun meanwhile, we certainly 
shall get the world right side up, by and bye. 

Among the many instrumentalities at work to produce this, 
increasing interest in the sailor's welfare is a cheering omen. 
Of all classes, except the negro slaves, they have been the most 
neglected and the most abused. The book of judgment can 
alone reveal how much they have suffered on the wide, deep 
ocean, with no door to escape from tyranny, no friendly forest 
to hide them from the hunter ; doomed, at their best estate, to 
suffer almost continued deprivation of home, that worse feature 
in the curse of Cain ; their minds shut up in caves of ignorance 
so deep, that if religion enters with a friendly lamp, it too 
frequently terrifies them with the shadows it makes visible. 
Keligious they must be, in some sense, even when they know 
it not ; for no man with a human soul within him, can be 
unconscious of the Divine Presence, with infinite space round 
him, the blue sky overhead, with its million world-lamps, tind 
everywhere, beneath and around him, 



108 LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 

"Great ocean, strangest of creation's sons! 
Unconquerable, unreposed, iintired ! 
That rolls the wild, profound, eternal bass 
In Nature's anthem, and makes music such 
As pleaseth the ear of God." 

Thus circumstanced, the sailor cannot be ignorant, without 
being superstitious too. The infinite comes continually before 
him, in the sublimest symbols of sight and sound. He does 
not know the language, but he feels the tone. Goethe has told 
us, in most beautiful allegory, of two bridges, whereby earnest 
souls pass from the Finite to the Infinite. One is a rainbow, 
which spans the dark river ; and this is faith ; the other is a 
shadow cast quite over by the giant superstition, when he 
stands between the setting sun and the unknown shore. 

Blessings on all friendly hands that are leading the sailor to 
the rainbow bridge. His spirit is made reverential in the 
great temple of nature, resounding with the wild voices of the 
winds, and strange music of the storm-organ; too long has it 
been left trembling and shivering on the bridge of shadows. 
For him, too, the rainbow spans the dark stream, and becomes 
at last a bridge of gems. 



LETTER XXII. 

THE NON-RESISTING COLONY. 

June 23, 1842. 

The highest gifts my soul has received, during its world- 
pilgrimage, have often been bestowed by those who were poorj 
both in money and intellectual cultivation. Among those 
donors, I particularly remember a hard-working, uneducated 
mechanic, from Indiana or Illinois. He told me that he was 
one of thirty New Englanders, who, twelve years before, had 
gone out to settle in the western wilderness. They were 
mostly neighbours; and had been drawn to unite together in 
emigration from a general unity of opinion on various subjects. 
For some years previous, they had been in the habit of meeting 
occasionally at each other's houses, to talk over their duties to 
God and man, in all simplicity of heart. Their library was 
the gospel, their priesthood the inward light. There were then 



LETTERS FKOM NEW YORK. 109 

no anti-slavery societies; but thus taught, and reverently 
willing to learn, they had no need of such agency, to discover 
that it was wicked to enslave. The efforts of peace societies 
had reached this secluded band only in broken echoes, and 
non-resistance societies had no existence. But with the volume 
of the Prince of Peace, and hearts open to his influence, what 
need had they of preambles and resolutions'? 

Kich in spiritual culture, this little band started for the far 
West. Their inward homes were blooming gardens ; they 
made their outward in a wilderness. They were industrious 
and frugal, and all things prospered under their hands. But 
soon wolves caine near the fold, in the shape of reckless, 
unprincipled adventurers; believers in force and cunning, who 
acted according to their creed. The colony of practical 
Christians spoke of their depredations in terms of gentlest 
remonstrance, and repaid them with unvarying kindness. They 
went farther — they openly announced, "You may do us what 
evil you choose, we will return nothing but good." Lawyers 
came into the neighbourhood, and ofiered their services to settle 
disputes. They answered, ''We have no need of you. As 
neighbours, we receive you in the most friendly spirit; but for 
us, your occupation has ceased to exist." "What will you do, 
if rascals burn your barns, and steal your harvests'?" "We 
will return good for evil. We believe this is the highest truth, 
and therefore the best expediency." 

When the rascals heard this, they considered it a marvellous 
good joke, and said and did many provoking things, which to 
them seemed witty. Bars were taken down in the night, and 
cows let into the cornfields. The Christians repaired the 
damage as well as they could, put the cows in the barn, and at 
twilight drove them gently home, saying, "Neighbour, your 
cows have been in my field. I have fed them well during the 
day, but I would not keep them all night, lest the children 
should suflfer for their milk." 

If this was fun, they who planned the joke found no heart 
to laugh at it. By degrees, a visible change came over these 
troublesome neighbours. They ceased to cut ofi" horses' tails, 
and break the legs of poultry. Rude boys would say to a 
younger brother, "Don't throw that stone, Bill! When I killed 
the chicken last week, didn't tliey send it to mother, because 
they thought chicken-broth would be good for poor Mary*? I 
should think you'd be ashamed to throw stones at their 



110 LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 

chickens." Thus was evil overcome with good, till not one 
was found to do them wilful injury. , 

Years passed on, and saw them thriving in worldly substance, 
beyond their neighbours, yet beloved by all. From them the 
lawyer and the constable obtained no fees. The Sheriff 
stammered and apologised, wlien he took their hard-earned 
goods in payment for the war tax. They mildly replied, " 'Tis 
a bad trade, friend. Examine it in the light of conscience and 
see if it be not so." But while they refused to pay such fees 
and taxes, they were liberal to a proverb in their contributions 
for all useful and benevolent purposes. 

At the end of ten years, the public lands, which they had 
chosen for their farms, were advertised for sale by auction. 
According to custom, those who had settled and cultivated the 
soil, were considered to have a right to bid it in at the govern- 
ment price; which at that time was five shillings per acre. 
But the fever of land speculation then chanced to run unusually 
high. Adventurers from all parts of the country were flocking 
to the auction; and capitalists in Baltimore, Philadelphia, 
New York and Boston, were sending agents to buy up western 
lands. No one supposed that custom, or equity, would be 
regarded. The first day's sale showed that speculation ran to 
the verge of insanity. Land w^as eagerly bought in, at £4: 5s., 
£5, and £5 5s. an acre. The Christian colony had small hope 
of retaining their farms. As first settlers, they had chosen the 
best land; and persevering industry had brought it into the 
highest cultivation. Its market value was much greater than 
the acres already sold, at exorbitant prices. In view of these 
facts, they had prepared their minds for another remove into 
the wilderness, perhaps to be again ejected by a similar process. 
But the morning their lot was offered for sale, they observed, 
with grateful surprise, that their neighbours were everywhere 
busy among the crowd, begging and expostulating: "Don't bid 
on these lands! These men have been working hard on them 
for ten years. During all that time, they never did harm to 
man or brute. They are always ready to do good for evil. 
They are a blessing to any neighbourhood. It would be a sin 
and a shame to bid on their lands. Let them go, at the 
government price." 

The sale came on; the cultivators of the soil offered five 
shillings; intending to bid higher if necessary. But among 
all that crowd of selfish, reckless speculators, not one bid over 



LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. Ill 

them! Without an opposing voice, the fair acres returned to 
them! I do not know a more remarkable instance of evil over- 
come with good. The wisest political economy lies folded up 
in the maxims of Christ. 

With delighted reverence, I listened to this unlettered back- 
woodsman, as he explained his philosophy of universal love. 
*'What would you do," said I, "if an idle, thieving vagabond 
came among you, resolved to stay, but determined not to work." 
*'We would give him food when hungry, shelter him when 
cold, and always treat him as a brother," "Would not this 
process attract such characters ? How would you avoid beinof 
overrun with them?" "Such characters would either reform, 
or not remain with us. We should never speak an angry 
word, or refuse to minister to their necessities ; but we should 
invariably regard them with the deepest sadness, as we would 
a guilty, but beloved son. This is harder for the human soul 
to bear, than whips or prisons. They could not stand it ; I 
am sure they could not. It would either melt them, or drive 
them away. In nine cases out of ten, I believe it would melt 
them." 

I felt rebuked for my want of faith, and consequent shallow- 
ness of insight. That hard-handed labourer brought greater 
riches to my soul than an Eastern merchant laden with pearls. 
Again I repeat, money is not wealth. 



LETTER XXIII. 

THE FLORIDA SLAVE TRADER, AND PATRIARCH — BOSWELL's RE- 
MARKS ON THE SLAVE TRADE THE FIXED POINT OF VIEW. 

July 7, 1842. 

It has been my fortune, in the course of a changing life, to 
meet with many strange characters; but I never, till lately, 
met with one altogether unaccountable. 

Some six or eight years ago, I read a very odd pamphlet, 
called "The Patriarchal System of Society, as it exists under 
the name of Slavery ; with its necessity and advantages. By 
an inhabitant of Florida." The writer assumes that "the 
patriarchal system constitutes the bond of social compact ; and 



112 LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 

is better adapted for strength, durability, and independence^ 
than any state of society hitherto ado})ted." 

" The prosperous state of our northern neighbours," says he, 
'^ proceeds, in many instances, indirectly from southern slave 
labour ; though they are not aware of it." This was written 
in 1829 ; read in these days of universal southern bankruptcy,, 
it seems ludicrous ; as if it had been intended for sarcasm, 
rather than sober earnest. 

But the main object of this singular production is to prove 
that colour ought not to be the badge of degradation ; that the 
only distinction should be between slave and free — not between 
white and coloured. That the free peoi:)le of colour, instead of 
being persecuted, and driven from the southern States, ought 
to be made eligible to all offices and means of wealth. This 
would form, he thinks, a grand chain of security, by which the 
interests of the two castes would become united, and the slaves 
be kept in permanent subordination. Intermarriage between 
the races he strongly advocates ; not only as strengthening 
the bond of union between castes that otherwise naturally war 
upon each other, but as a great improvement of the human 
race. " The intermediate grades of colour," says he, " are not 
only healthy, but, when condition is favourable, they are 
improved in shape, strength, and beauty. Daily experience 
shows that there is no natural antipathy between the castes on 
account of colour. It only requires to repeal laws as impolitic 
as they are unjust and unnatural — laws which confound beauty, 
merit, and condition, in one state of infamy and degradation on 
account of complexion. It is only required to leave nature to 
find out a safe and wholesome remedy for evils, which of all 
others are the most deplorable, because they are morally 
irreconcilable with the fundamental principles of happiness and 
self-preservation." 

I afterwards heard that Z. Kinsley, the author of this 
pamphlet, lived with a coloured wife, and treated her and her 
children with kindness and consideration. A traveller, writing 
from Florida, stated that he visited a planter, whose coloured 
wife sat at the head of the table, surrounded by healthy and 
handsome children. That the parlour was full of portraits of 
African beauties, to which the gentleman drew his attention, 
with much exultation; dwelling with great earnestness on the 
superior physical endowments of the coloured race, and the 
obvious advantages of amalgamation. I at once conjectured 



LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 113 

that this eccentric planter, was the author of the pamphlet on 
the patriarchal system. 

Soon after, it was rumoured that Mr. Kinsley liad purchased 
a large tract of land of the Haitien government : that he had 
carried his slaves there, and given them lots. Then I heard 
that it was a colony established for the advantage of his own 
mulatto sons; that the workmen were in a qualified kind of 
slavery, by consent of the government; and that he still held a 
large number of slaves in Florida. 

Last week, this individual, who had so much excited my 
curiosity, was in the city ; and I sought an interview. I found 
his conversation entertaining, but marked by the same incon- 
gruity that characterizes his writings and his practice. His 
head is a peculiar one; it would, I think, prove as great a 
puzzle to phrenologists, as he himself is to moralists and phil- 
osophers. 

I told him of the traveller's letter, and asked if he were the 
gentleman described. 

"I never saw the letter," he replied; "but from what you 
say, I have no doubt that I am the man. I always thought 
and said, that the coloured race were superior to us, physically 
and morally. They are more healthy, have more graceful forms, 
softer skins, and sweeter voices. They are more docile and 
affectionate, more faithful in their attachments, and less prone 
to mischief, than the white race. If it were not so, they could 
not have been kept in slavery." 

"It is a shameful and a shocking thought," said I, "that we 
should keep them in slavery by reason of their very virtues." 

"It is so, ma'am; but, like many other shameful things, it 
is true." 

"Where did you obtain your portraits of coloured beauties?' 

"In various places. Some of them I got on the coast of 
Africa. If you want to see beautiful specimens of the human 
race, you should see some of the native women there." 

"Then you have been on the coast of Africa?" 

"Yes, ma'am; I carried on the slave trade several years." 

"You announce that fact very coolly," said I. "Do you 
know that, in 'New England, men look upon a slave-trader 
with as much horror as they do upon a pirate?" 

"Yes; and I am glad of it. They will look upon a slave- 
holder just so, by and by. Slave-trading was a very respectable 
business when I was voung. The first merchants in Endand 



114 LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 

and America were engaged in it. Some people hide things 
which they think other people don't like. I never conceal 
anything." 

"Where did you become acquainted with your wife"?" 

"On the coast of Africa, ma'am. She was a new nigger, 
when I first saw her." 

"What led you to become attached to her"?" 

"She was a fine, tall figure, black as jet, but very handsome. 
She was very capable, and could carry on all the afiairs of the 
plantation in my absence, as well as I could myself. She was 
affectionate and faithful, and I could trust her. I have fixed 
her nicely in my Haytien colony. I wish you would go there. 
She would give you the best in the house. You ought to go, 
to see how happy the human race can be. It is in a fine, rich 
valley, about thirty miles from Port Platte; heavily timbered 
with mahogany all round; well-watered; flowers so beautiful; 
fruits in abundance, so delicious that you could not refrain 
from stopping to eat, till you could eat no more. My son has 
laid out good roads, and built bridges and mills; the people 
are improving, and everything is prosjDerous. I am anxious 
to establish a good school there. I engaged a teacher; but 
somebody persuaded him it was mean to teach niggers, and so 
he fell oft" from his bargain." 

"I have heard that you hold your labourers in a sort of 
qualified slavery; and some friends of the coloured race have 
apprehensions that you may sell them again." 

"My labourers in Haiti are not slaves. They are a kind of 
indentured apprentices. I give them land, and they bind 
themselves to work for me. I have no power to take them 
away from that island; and you know very well that I could 
not sell them there." 

"I am glad you have relinquished the power to make slaves 
of them again. I had charge of a fine, intelligent fugitive, 
about a year ago. I wanted to send him to your colony; but 
I did not dare to trust you." 

" You need not have been afraid, ma'am. I should be the 
last man on earth to give up a runaway. If my own were to 
run away, I wouldn't go after 'em." 

"If these are your feelings, why don't you take all your 
slaves to Haiti?" 

"I have thought that subject all over, ma'am; and I have 
settled it in my own mind. All we can do in this world is to 



LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 115 

balance evils. I want to do great tilings for Haiti; and in 
order to do them, I must have money. If I have no negroes 
to cultivate my Florida lands, they will run to waste; and 
then Ifcan raise no money from them for the benefit of Haiti. 
I do all I can to make them comfortable, and they love me, 
like a father. They would do anything on earth to please me. 
Once I stayed away longer that usual, and they thought I was 
dead. When 1 reached home, they overwhelmed me with 
their caresses; I could hardly stand it." 

" Does it not grieve you to think of leaving these faithful, 
kind-hearted people to the cruel chances of slavery 1" 

"Yes, it does; but I hope to get all my plans settled in a 
few years." 

"You tell me you are seventy-six years old; what if you 
should die before your plans are completed?" 

"Likely enough I shall. In that case, my heirs would 
break my will, I dare sav, and my poor niggers would be 
badly off-." 

"Then manumit them now; and avoid this dreadful risk." 

"I have thought that all over, ma'am; and I have settled it 
that I can do more good by keeping them in slavery a few 
years more. The best we can do in this world is to balance 
evils judiciously." 

"But you do not balance wisely. Remember that all the 
descendants of your slaves, through all coming time, will be 
affected by your decision." 

"So will all Haiti be affected throuoh all cominsf time, if I 
can carry out my plans. To do good in the world, we must 
have money. That's the way I reasoned when I carried on 
the slave trade. It was very profitable then." 

" And do you have no remorse of conscience, in recollecting 
that bad business f 

"Some things I do not like to remember; but they were not 
things in which I was to blame; they were inevitably 
attendant on the trade." 

I argued that any trade must be wicked, that had such 
inevitable consequences. He admitted it ; but still clung to 
his balance of evils. If that theory is admitted in morals at 
all, I confess that his practice seems to be a legitimate, though 
an extreme result. But it was altocfether vain to arojue with 
him about fixed principles of right and wrong ; one might as 
well fire small shot at the hide of a rhinoceros. Yet were 



116 LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 

there admirable points about liim ; — perseverance, that would 
conquer the world ; an heroic candour, that avowed all things, 
creditable, and discreditable ; and kindlj sympathies, too — 
though it must be confessed that they go groping and flounder- 
ing about in the strangest fashion. 

He came from Scotland ; no other country, perhaps, except 
New England, could have produced such a character. His 
father was a Quaker; and he still loves to attend Quaker 
meetings ; particularly silent ones, where he says he has 
planned some of his best bargains. To complete the circle of 
contradictions, he likes the abolitionists, and is a prodigious 
admirer of George Thompson. 

" My neighbours call me an abolitionist," said he; "I tell 
them they may do so, and welcome ; for it is a pity they 
should'nt have one case of amalgamation to point at." 

This singular individual has been conversant with all sorts 
of people, and seen almost all parts of the world. " I have 
known the Malay, and the African, the North American 
Indian, and the European," said he ; '' and the more I've seen 
of the world, the less I understand it. It's a queer place ; 
that's a fact." 

Probably this mixture with people of all creeds and customs, 
combined with the habit of looking outward for his guide of 
action, may have bewildered his moral sense, and i)roduced his 
system of "balancing evils!" A theory obviously absurd, as 
well as slippery in its application ; for none but God can 
balance evils : it requires omniscience and omnipresence to do 
it. 

His conversation produced great activity of thought on the 
subject of conscience, and of that '' light that lighteth every 
man who conieth into the world." Whether this utilitarian 
remembers it or not, he must have stifled many convictions 
before he arrived at his present state of mind. And so it 
must have been with 'Hhe pious John Newton," whose devo- 
tional letters from the coast of Africa, while he was slave- 
trading there, record '' sweet seasons of communion with his 
God." That he was not left without a witness within him, is 
proved by the fact, that in his journal he exj^resses gratitude 
to God for opening the door for him to leave the slave trade, 
by providing other employment. The monitor within did not 
deceive him ; but his education was at war with its dictates, 
because it taught him that whatever was legalised was right. 



LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 117 

Plain as tlie guilt of the slave trade now is to every man, 
woman, and child, it was not so in the time of Clarkson ; had 
it been otherwise, there would have been no need of his 
laboui'S. He was accused of planning treason and insurrection ; 
plots were laid against his life, and the difficulty of combating 
his obviously just principles, led to the vilest misrepresentations 
and the most false assumptions. Thus it must always be with 
those who attack a very corrupt })ub]ic opinion. 

The slave trade, which all civilised laws now denounce as 
piracy, was defended in precisely the same spirit that slavery 
is now. Witness the following remarks from Boswell, the 
biographer of Dr. Johnson, whose opinions echo the tone of 
genteel society: 

" I beg leave to enter my most solemn protest against Dr. 
Johnson's general doctrine with respect to the slave trade. I 
will resolutely say that this unfavourable notion of it was owing 
to prejudice, and imperfect or false information. The wild and 
dangerous attempt which has for some time been persisted in, 
to obtain an act of our legislature to abolish so very important 
and necessary a branch of commercial interest, must have been 
crushed at once, had not the insignificance of the zealots, who 
vainly took the lead in it, made the vast body of planters, 
merchants, and others, whose immense properties are involved 
in that trade, reasonably enough suppose that there could be 
no danger. The encouragement which the attempt has re- 
ceived, excites my wonder and indignation; and though some 
men of superior abilities have supported it (whether from a 
love of temporary popularity w^hen prosperous, or a love of 
general mischief when desperate), my opinion is unshaken. 
To abolish a status which in all ages God has sanctioned, and 
man continued, would not only be robbery to an innumerable 
class of our fellow subjects, but it would be extreme cruelty to 
African savages; a portion of whom it saves from massacre, or 
intolerable bondage in their own country, and introduces into 
a much happier state of life ; especially now, when their passage 
to the West Indies, and their treatment there, is humanely 
regulated. To abolish that trade, would be to shut the gates 
of mercy on mankind." 

These changes in the code of morals adopted by society, by 
no means unsettle my belief in eternal and unchangeable 
principles of right and wrong: neither do they lead me to 
doubt that in all these cases men inwardly know better than 



118 LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 

they act. The slaveholdePj when he manumits on his deatli 
bed, thereby acknowledges that he has known he was doing 
wrong. Public opinion expresses what men will to do; not 
their inward perceptions. All kinds of crimes have been 
countenanced by public opinion in some age or nation; but we 
cannot as easily show how far they were sustained by reason 
and conscience in each individual. I believe the lamp never goes 
out, though it may shine dimly through a foggy atmosphere. 

This consideration should renew our zeal to purify public 
opinion ; to let no act or word of ours help to corrupt it in the 
slightest degree. How shall we fulfil this sacred trust, which 
each holds for the good of all 1 Not by calculating con- 
sequences ; not by balancing evils, but by reverent obedience 
to our own highest convictions of individual duty. 

Few men ask concernino- ri^^ht and wrongs of their own 
hearts. Few listen to the oracle within which can only be 
heard in the stillness. The merchant seeks his moral standard 
on 'Change — a fitting name for a thing so fluctuating ; the 
sectary in the opinion of his small theological department ; the 
politician in the tumultuous echo of his party ; the worldling 
in the buzz of saloons. In a word, each man inquires of Ms 
public; what wonder, then, that the answers are selfish as 
trading interest, blind as local prejudice, and various as human 
whim ? 

A German drawing-master once told me of a lad who wished 
to sketch landscapes from nature. The teacher told him that 
the first object was to choose some fixed point of view. The 
sagacious pupil chose a cow grazing beneath the trees. Of 
course, his fixed point soon began to move hither and thither, 
as she was attracted by the sweetness of the pasturage ; and 
the lines of his drawing fell into strange confusion. 

This is a correct type of those who choose public opinion for 
their moral fixed point of view. It moves according to the 
provender before it, and they who trust to it have but a 
whirling and distorted landscape. 

Coleridge defines public opinion as "the average prejudices 
of the community." Woe unto those who have no safer guide 
of principles and practice than this "average of prejudices." 
Woe unto them in an especial manner, in these latter days, 
when " The windows of heaven are oj^ened, and therefore the 
foundations of the earth do shake ! " 

Feeble wanderers are they, following a flickering Jack-o'- 



LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 119 

lantern, when there is a calm, bright pole-star for ever above 
the horizon, to guide their steps, if they would but look 
to it. 



LETTER XXIV. 

THE RED ROOF — THE LITTLE CHILD PICKING A WHITE CLOVER — 
MUSIC AND FIRE WORKS AT CASTLE GARDENS. 

July 28, 1842. 

When the spirit is at war with its outward environment, 
because it is not inwardly dwelling in trustful obedience to its 
God, how often does some very slight incident bring it back 
humble and repentant, to the Father's footstool. A few days 
since, cities seemed to me such hateful places, that I deemed 
it the greatest of hardships to be pent up therein. As usual, 
the outward grew more and more detestable, as it reflected the 
restlessness of the inward. Piles of stones and rubbish, left 
by the desolating fire, looked more hot and dreary than 
ever ; they were building brick houses between ine and the 
sunset — and in my requiring selfishness, I felt as if it were 
my sunset, and no man had a right to shut it out ; and then to 
add the last drop to my vexation, they painted the roof of the 
house and piazza as fierce a red as if the mantle of the great 
fire, that destroyed its predecessor, had fallen over them. • The 
wise course would have been to try to find something agree- 
able in a red roof, since it suited my neighbour's convenience to 
have one. But the head was not in a mood to be wise because 
the heart was not humble and obedient ; so I fretted inwardly 
about the red roof, more than I would care to tell in words; I 
even thouglit to myself, that it would be no more than just 
and right if people, with such bad taste, should be sent to live 
by themselves on a quarantine island. Then I began to think 
of myself as a most unfortunate and ill-used individual, to be for 
ever pent up within brick walls, without even a dandelion to 
gaze upon ; from that I fell to thinking of many fierce encoun- 
ters between my will and necessity, and how will had always 
been conquered, chained, and sent to the treadmill to work. 
The more I thouglit after this fashion, hotter glared the bricks, 
and fiercer glowed the red roof under the scorching sun. I was 



120 LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 

making a desert within, to paint its desolate likeness on the 
scene without. 

A friend found me thus, and having faith in nature's healing 
power, he said, " Let iis seek green fields and flowery nooks." 
So we walked abroad ; and while yet amid the rattle and glare 
of the city, close by the iron railway, I saw a very little, rag- 
ged child stooping over a small patch of stinted, dusty grass. 
She rose up with a broad smile over her hot face, for she had 
found a white clover ! The tears were in my eyes. " God 
bless thee, poor child ! " said I ; " thou hast taught my soul a 
lesson, which it will not soon forget. Thou, poor neglected 
one, canst find blossoms by the dusty wayside, and lejoice 
in thy hard path, as if it were a mossy bank strewn with 
violets." I felt humbled before that ragged, gladsome child. 
Then saw I plainly that walls of brick and mortar did not, 
and could not, hem me in. I thought of those who Ioa ed me 
and every remembered kindness was a flower in my path ; I 
thought of intellectual gardens, where this child might per- 
chance never enter, but where I could wander at will over acres 
broad as the world ; and if even there the restless spirit felt a 
limit, lo, poetry had but to throw a ray thereon, and the fair gar- 
dens of earth were reflected in the heavens like the fata mor- 
gana of Italian skies, in a drapery of rainbows. Because I was 
poor in spirit, straightway there was none so rich as I. Then 
was it revealed to me that only the soul which gathers flowers 
by the dusty wayside can truly love the fresh anemone by the 
running brook, or the trailing arbutus hiding its sweet face 
among the fallen leaves. I returned home a better and wiser 
woman, thanks to the ministry of that little one. I saw that I 
was not ill-used and unfortunate, but blessed beyond others ; 
one of nature's favourites, whom she ever took to her kindly 
heart, and comforted in all seasons of distress and waywardness. 
Though the sunset was shut out, there still remained the roseate 
flush of twilight, as if the sun, in answer to my love, had writ- 
ten to me a farewell message on the sky. The red piazza stood 
there, blushing for him who painted it ; but it no longer pained 
my eyesight ; I thought what a friendly warmth it would have, 
seen through the wintry snows. Oh, blessed indeed are little 
children ! Mortals do not understand half they owe them ; for 
the good they do us is a spiritual gift, and few perceive how it 
intertwines the mystery of life. They form a ladder of garlands 
on which the angels descend to our souls ; and without them. 



LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 121 

such communication would be utterly lost. Let us strive to be 
like little children. 

As I mused on the altered aspect of the outward world, 
according to the state of him who looked upon it, I raised to my 
eye a drop from a broken chandelier. That glass fragment was 
like a fairy wand, or Aladdin's wondrous lamp. The line of 
tumbling wooden shantees, which I had often blamed the cap- 
ricious lire for sparing, the piles of lime and stones that 
wearied my eyesight were at once changed to rainbows ; even 
the offensive red roof smiled upon me in the softened beauty of 
purple and gold. Not earth, but the medium through which 
•earth is seen, produces beauty. I said to myself, " W hereunto 
shall I liken this angular bit of glass 1 " The answer came to 
me in music — in words and tones of song : " The faith touching 
all things with hues of heaven." Then prayed I earnestly for 
that faith, as a perpetual gift. Prayer, earnest and true, rose 
from that fragment of broken glass ; thus from things most 
•common and trivial, spring the highest and the holiest. 

I thought then that I would never again look on oiitward 
^circumstances, except in the cheerful light of a trusting and 
grateful heart. Yet within a week, came the restless com- 
paring of me with thee. If I could only be situated as such an 
one was, how good I could be, and how much good I would do. 
I said within myself, " This must not be. If I indulge this 
train of thought, the walls will again crowd upon me, and the 
T^ricks glare worse than ever." So I walked to the Battery, to 
look at moonlight on the water ; in fvill faith that " Nature 
never did betray the heart that loved her." The moon had not 
yet risen ; but softly from the recesses of Castle Garden came 
tones of music, welcome to my soul as a mother's voice. We 
walked in, thinking only to hear the band, and lounge quietly 
•on a seat overhanging the water. All pleasure in this world is 
but the cessation of some pain ; and they only who work unto 
weariness, in mind or body, can fully enjoy the luxury of 
repose. And this repose was so perfect, so strengthening ! 
Instead of the pent-up, stifling air of the central city, was a 
cool, evening breeze, gentle as if a thousand winged messengers 
fanned one's cheeks for love ; below, the ever -flowing water 
laved the stones with a refreshing sound ; round us floated 
music, so plaintive and so shadowy ! It sung " The light of 
other days " — the very voice of moonlight, soft and trembling 
•over the dim waters of the past ; and then, as if the atmosphere 



122 LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 

were not already bathed in sufficient beauty, slowly rose the 
mild, majestic moon ; and the water-spirits hailed her presence 
with mazy, undulating dance, as if rejoicing in the glittering 
wealth of jewelry she gave. At such an hour, beyond all 
others, does nature seem to be filled with an inward, hidden 
life ; in serious and beseeching tones, she seems to say, " Lo I 
reveal unto you a great mystery, lying at the foundation of all 
being. I speak it in all tones, I write it in all colours. When 
will the mortal arise who understands my language 1 " And a 
sacred voice answers, " When His will is done on earth, as it 
is done in heaven." In the midst of such communion, the 
soul feels that 

* ' This \'isible nature and this common world, 
Is all too narrow." 

Wings wave in the air, voices speak through the sea, and the 
rustling trees are whispering spirits. It was this yearning 
after the spiritual that pervades all things, whose presence 
never found, is constantly revealed in so many echoes — it is 
this dim longing, which of old " peopled space with life and 
mystical predominance ;" this filled the grove with dryads, the 
waves with nymphs, the earth with fairies, the sky with angels. 
The external and the sensual call this the ravings of ima- 
gination ; and they know not that she is the priestess of high 
truth. 

All this I did not think of, as I leaned over the waters of 
Castle Garden ; but this, and far more was spoken into my 
heart ; and I shall find it all recorded in rainbow letters, on 
my journal there beyond. 

In such listening mood, when the outward lay before me, in 
hieroglyphic symbols of a volume so infinite, I turned with a 
feeling of sadness towards a painted representation of Vera 
Cruz, which the bill proclaimed was to be taken by the French 
fleet that evening, for the amusement of spectators. The imi- 
tation of a distant city was certainly good, speaking according 
to the theatrical standard ; but it seemed to me desecration, 
that Art should thus intrude her delusions into the sanctuary 
of Nature. In a mood less elevated, I might have scorned 
her pretensions, with a proud impatience ; but as it was, I 
simply felt sad at the incongruity. I looked at the moon in 
her serene beauty, at the little boats here floating across the 
veil of silver blonde, which she had thrown over the dancing 



LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 123 

waves, and there, with lanterns, gliding like fire-flies among 
the deep distant shadows ; and I said, if Art ventures into this 
presence, let her come only as the Greek Diana, or marble 
nymph sleeping on her urn. 

But Art revenged herself for the slight estimation in which 
I held her. She could not satisfy me with beauty harmonious 
with Nature ; but she charmed with the brilliancy of contrast. 
Opposite me I saw a light mildly splendid, as if seen through 
an atmosphere of motionless water. It had a fairy look, and 
I could not otherwise than observe it, from time to time, 
though the moonbeams played so gracefully and still. Anon, 
with a whizzing sound, it became a wheel of fire ; then it 
changed to a hexagon, set with emeralds, tojDaz, and rubies ; 
then circles of orange, white, and crimson light revolved 
swiftly round a resplendent centre of amethyst ; then it became 
fiowers made of gems ; and after manifold changes of unex- 
pected beauty, it revolved a large star, set with jewels of all 
rainbow hues, over which there fell a continual fountain of 
golden rain. It was called the kaleidescope ; and its fairy 
splendour far exceeded anything I ever imagined of fireworks. 
I asked pardon of insulted Art, and thanked her, too, for the 
pleasure she had given me. 

I turned again to moonlight and silence, and my happy 
spirit carried no discord there. Even when I thought of 
returning to the hot and crowded city, I said, "This too will 
I do in cheerfulness. I will learn of nature to love all, and 
do all." Slowly, and with loving reluctance, we turned away 
from the moon-lighted waters; then came across the waves 
the liquid melody of a flute ; it called us back with such 
friendly, sweet entreaty, that we could not otherwise than stop 
to listen to its last silvery cadence. Again we turned away, 
and had nearly made our escape, when an accordion from a 
distant boat, in softened accents begged us still to linger. 
Then a band on board the newly-arrived French frigate struck 
up the Cracovienne, the expressive dance of Poland, bringing 
with it images of romantic grace, and strange deep thoughts of 
the destiny of nations. We lingered and lingered. Nature 
and Art seemed to have conspired that night to do their best 
to please us. At last, the sounds died away ; and stepping to 
to their echo in our memories, we passed out ; the iron gate 
of the Battery clanked behind us; the streets reared their 
brick walls between us and the loveliness of earth and heaven. 



124 LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 

But they could not shut it out ; for it had passed into our 
souls. 

You will smile, and say the amount of all this romancing is 
a confession that I w^as a tired and wayward child, needing 
moonlight and a show to restore my serenity. And what of 
that ? If I am not too perfect to be in a wayward humour, I 
surely will not be too dignified to tell of it. I say, as Betine 
does to Gunderode : " How glad I am to be so insignificant. I 
need not fork up discreet thoughts when I write to thee, but 
just narrate how things are. Once I thought I must not 
write unless I could give importance to the letter by a bit of 
moral, or some discreet thought ; now I think not to chisel out, 
or glue together my thoughts. Let others do that. If I must 
write so, I cannot think." 



LETTER XXV. 

ROCKLAND LAKE MAJOR ANDRE — THE DUTCH FARMERS. 

August 4, 1842. 

Last week, for a single day, I hid myself in the green sanc- 
tuary of nature ; and from the rising of the sun till the going 
down of the moon, took no more thought of cities, than if such 
excrescences never existed on the surface of the globe. A huge 
waggon, traversing our streets, under the midsummer sun, 
bearing, in immense letters, the words, " Ice from Rockland 
Lake," had frequently attracted my attention, and become 
associated with images of freshness and romantic beauty. There- 
fore, in seeking the country for a day, I said our course should 
be up the Hudson, to Rockland Lake. The noontide sun was 
scorching, and our heads were dizzy with the motion of the 
boat ; but these inconveniences, so irksome at the moment, are 
faintly traced on the tablet of memory. She engraves only 
the beautiful in lasting characters ; for beauty alone is immortal 
and divine. 

We stopped at Piermont, on the widest part of Tappan Bay, 
where the Hudson extends itself to the width of three miles. 
On the opposite side, in full view from the hotel, is Tarrytown, 
where poor Andre was captured. Tradition says, that a very 



LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 125 

large white-wood tree, under which he was taken, was struck 
by lightning, on the very day that news of Andre's death was 
received at Tarrytown. As I sat gazing on the opposite woods, 
dark in the shadows of moonlight, I thought upon how very 
slight a circumstance often depends the fate of individuals, 
and the destiny of nations. In the autumn of 1780, a farmer 
chanced to be making cider at a mill, on the east bank of the 
Hudson, near that part of Haverstraw Bay, called " Mother's 
Lap." Two young men, carrying muskets, as usual in those 
troubled times, stopped for a draught of sweet cider, and seated 
themselves on a log to wait for it. The farmer found them 
looking very intently on some distant object, and inquired what 
they saw. "Hush! hush!" they replied; "the red coats are 
yonder, just within the Lap," pointing to an English gun boat, 
with twenty-four men, lying on their oars. Behind the shelter 
of a rock, they fired into the boat, and killed two persons. The 
British returned a random shot ; but ignorant of the number 
of their opponents, and seeing that it was useless to waste 
ammunition, on a hidden foe, they returned whence they came, 
with all possible speed. This boat had been sent to convey 
Major Andre to the British sloop-of-war. Vulture, then lying at 
anchor oft' Teller's Point. Shortly after, Andre arrived ; and 
finding the boat gone, he, in attempting to proceed through the 
interior, was captured. Had not those men stopped to drink 
sweet cider, it is probable that Andre would not have been 
hung ; the American revolution might have terminated in a 
quite difterent fashion ; men now deified as heroes, might have 
been handed down to posterity as traitors ; our citizens might 
be proud of claiming descent from tories ; and slavery have 
been abolished eight years ago, by virtue of our being British 
colonies. So much may depend on a draught of cider ! But 
would England herself have abolished slavery, had it not been 
for the impulse given to free principles by the American revolu- 
tion ? Probably not. It is not easy to calculate the conse- 
quences involved even in a draught of cider ; for no fact stands 
alone ; each has infinite relations. 

A very pleasant ride at sunset brought us to Orangetown, to 
the lone field where Major Andre was executed. It is planted 
with potatoes, but the plough spares the spot on which was 
once his gallows and his grave. A rude heap of stones, with 
the remains of a dead fir tree in the midst, are all that mark it ; 
but tree and stones are covered with names. It is on an 



126 LETTERS FROil NEW YORK. 

eminence, commanding a view of the country for miles. I 
gazed on tlie surrounding woods, and remembered on this self- 
same spot, the beautiful and accomplished young man walked 
back and forth, a few minutes preceding his execution, taking 
an earnest farewell look of earth and sky. My heart was sad 
within me. Our guide pointed to a house in full view, at half 
a mile's distance, wdiich he told us was at that time the head- 
quarters of General Washington. I turned my back suddenly 
upon it. The last place on earth where I would wish to think 
of Washington, is at the grave of Andre. I know that military 
men not only sanction but applaud the deed ; and reasoning 
according to the maxims of war, I am well aware how much 
can be said in its defence. That Washington considered it a 
duty, the discharge of which was most painful to him, I doubt 
not. But, thank God, the instincts of my childhood are un- 
vitiated by any such maxims. From the first hour I read of 
the deed, until the present day, I never did, and never could, 
look upon it as otherAvise than cool, deliberate murder. That 
the theory and practice of war commends the transaction, only 
serves to prove the infernal nature of war itself. 

Milton (stern moralist as he was, in many respects) main- 
tains, in his " Christian Doctrine," that falsehoods are sometimes 
not only allowable, but necessary. " It is scarcely possible," 
says he, " to execute any of the artifices of war, without openly 
uttering the greatest untruths, with the indisputable intention 
of deceiving." And because war requires lies, we are told by 
a Christian moralist, that lies must, therefore, be lawful ! It 
is observable that Milton is obliged to defend the necessity of 
falsehoods in the same way that fighting is defended ; he makes 
many references to the Jewish scriptures, but none to the 
Christian. Having established his position, that wilful, 
deliberate deception was a necessary ingredient of war, it is 
strange, indeed, that his enlightened mind did not at once draw 
the inference that war itself must be evil. It would have been 
so, had not the instincts of heart and conscience been perverted 
by the maxims of men, and the customs of that fierce period. 

The soul may be brought into military drill service, like the 
limbs of the body ; and such a one, perchance, might stand on 
Andre's grave, and glory in his capture ; but I would rather 
sufier his inglorious death, than attain to such a state of mind. 

A few yeais ago, the Duke of York requested the British 
consul to send the remains of Major Andre to England. At 



LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 127 

that time, two thriving firs were found near tlie grave, and a 
peach tree, which a lady in the neighbourhood had planted 
there, in the kindness of her heart. The farmers, who came to 
witness the interesting ceremony, generally evinced the most 
respectful tenderness for the memory of the unfortunate dead ; 
and many of the women and children wept. A few idlers, 
educated by militia trainings, and Fourth of July declamation, 
began to murmur that the memory of General Washington 
was insulted by any respect shown to the remains of Andre j 
but the ofier of a treat lured them to the tavern, where they 
soon became too drunk to guard the character of Washington. 
It was a beautiful day : and these disturbing spirits being re- 
moved, the impressive ceremony proceeded in solemn silence. 
The coffin was in good preservation, and contained all the 
bones, with a small quantity of dust. The roots of the peach 
tree had entirely interwoven the skull with their fine network. 
His hair, so much praised for its uncommon beauty, was tied, 
on the day of his execution, according to the fashion of the 
times. When his grave was opened, half a century afterwards, 
the ribbon was found in perfect preservation, and sent to his 
sister in England. When it was known that the sarcophagus, 
containing his remains, had arrived in New York, on its way 
to London, many ladies sent garlands, and emblematic devices, 
to be wreathed around it, in memory of the " beloved and 
lamented Andre." In their compassionate hearts, the teachings 
of nature were unperverted by maxims of war, or that selfish 
jealousy, which dignifies itself with the name of patriotism. 
Blessed be God, that custom forbids women to electioneer or 
fight. May the sentiment remain, till war and politics have 
passed away. Had not women and children been kept free 
from their polluting infiuence, the medium of communication 
between earth and heaven would have been completely cut off. 
At the foot of the eminence w^here the gallows had been 
erected, we found an old Dutch farm-house, occupied by a man 
who witnessed the execution, and whose father often sold 
peaches to the unhappy prisoner. He confirmed the account 
of Andre's uncommon personal beauty ; and had a vivid re- 
membrance of the pale, but calm heroism with which he met 
his untimely death. Every thing about this dwelling was 
anticipated. Two pictures of George III. and his queen, taken 
at the period when we owed allegiance to them, as " the govern- 
ment ordained of God," marked plainly tlie progress of art since 



128 LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 

that period ; for the portaits of Victoria on our cotton-spools^ 
are graceful in comparison. An ancient clock, which has 
ticked uninterrupted good time, on the same ground, for more- 
than a hundred years, stood in one corner of the little parlour. 
It was brought from the East Indies by an old Dutch sea- 
captain, great grandfather of the present owner. In thoso 
nations, where opinions are transmitted unchanged, the out- 
ward forms and symbols of thought remain so likewise. Tho 
gilded figures, which entirely cover the body of this old clock, 
are precisely the same, in perspective, outline, and expression^ 
as East India figures of the present day. 

My observations, as a traveller, are limited to a very small 
portion of the new world ; and, therefore, it has never been my 
lot to visit scenes so decidedly bearing the impress of former 
days, as this Dutch county. 

" Life, on a soil inhabited in olden time, and once glorious in 
its industry, activity, and attachment to noble pursuits, has a 
peculiar charm," says ISTovalis. " Nature seems to have 
become there more human, more rational ; a dim remembrance 
throws back, through the transparent present, the images of 
the world in marked outline ; and thus you enjoy a two-fold 
world, purged by this very process from the rude and 
disagreeable, %nd made the magic poetry and fable of the mind. 
Who knows whether also an indefinable influence of the 
former inhabitants, now departed, does not conspire to this 
end]" 

The solemn impression, so eloquently described by Novalis, is 
what I have desired above all things to experience ; but the 
times seen through " the transparent present" of these thatched 
farm-houses, and that red Dutch church, are not far enough 
in the distance ; for removed from us, it is true ; but still 
farther from mitred priest, crusading knight, and graceful 
troubadour. " An indefinable influence of the former inha- 
bitants," is indeed most visible ; but then it needs no ghost to 
tell us that these inhabitants were thoroughly Dutch. Since 
the New York and Erie railroad passed through their midst, 
careful observers say, that the surface of the stagnant social 
pool begins to ripple, in very small whirlpools, as if an insect 
stirred the waters. But before that period, a century produced 
no visible change in theology, agriculture, dress, or cooking. 
They were the very type of conservatism ; immoveable in the 
midst of incessant change. The same family live on the same 



LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 129 

homestead, generation after generation. Brothers married, 
and came home to fathers to live, so long as the old house 
would contain wives and swarming children ; and when house 
and barn were both overrun, a new tenement, of the self-same 
construction, was i)ut up, within stone's throw. To sell an 
acre of land received from their fathers, would be downright 
desecration. It is now literally impossible for a stranger to buy 
of them at any price. A mother might be coaxed to sell her 
babies, as easily as they to sell their farms. Consider what 
consternation such a people must have been in, when informed 
that the New York and Erie railroad was to be cut straight 
through their beloved, hereditary acres ! They swore by 
''donner und blitzen," that not a rail should ever be laid on 
their premises. The railroad company, however, by aid of 
chancery, compelled them to acquiesce ; and their grief was 
really pitiful to behold. Neighbours went to each other's 
" stoops," to spend a social evening ; and, as their wont had 
(^ver been, they sat and smoked at each other, without the 
unprofitable interruption of a single word of conversation ; but 
not according to custom, they now grasped each other's hands 
tightly at parting, and tears rolled down their weather-beaten 
cheeks. The iron of the railroad had entered their souls. 
And well it might ; for it not only divided orchards, pastures, 
and gardens, but in many instances, cut right through the old 
homesteads. Clocks that didn't know how to tick, except on 
the sinking floor where they had stood for years, were now 
removed to other premises, and went mute with sorrow. 
Heavy old tables, that hadn't stirred one of their countless legs 
for half a century, were now compelled to budge ; and potatoes, 
whose grandfathers and great grandfathers, had slept together 
in the same bed, were now removed beyond nodding distance. 
Joking apart, it was a cruel case. The women and children 
wept, and some of the old settlers actually died of a broken 
heart. Several years have elapsed since the Fire-King first 
went whizzing through on his wings of steam ; but the Dutch 
farmers have not yet learned to look on him without a muttered 
curse ; with fear and trembling, they guide their sleek horses 
and slow-and-sure waggons over the crossings, expecting, every 
instant, to be reduced to impalpable powder. 

Poor old men ! what will they say when railroads are carried 
through all their old seed-fields of opinion, theological and 
political] As yet, there are no twilight fore-shadowings of 

K 



130 LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 

such possibilities ; but assuredly, the clay will come, when 
ideas, like potatoes, will not be allowed to sprout up peaceably 
in the same hillock where their venerable progenitors vegetated 
from, time immemorial. 

As yet, no rival spires here point to the same heaven. 
There stands the Dutch Reformed Church with its red body, 
and low white tower, just where stood the small stone church, 
in which Major Andre was tried and sentenced. The modern 
church (I mean the building) is larger than the one of olden 
time ; but creed and customs, somewhat of the sternest, have 
not changed one hair's breadth. I thought of this as I looked 
at the unsightly edifice ; and suddenly there rose up before me 
the inage of some of our modern disturbers, stalking in among 
these worshipping antediluvians, and pricking their ears with 
the astounding intelligence, that they were "a den of thieves," 
and " a hill of hell." 'Tis a misfortune to have an imagination 
too vivid. I cannot think of that red Dutch church, without 
a crowd of images that make me laugh till the tears come. 

Not far from the church, is a small stone building, used as a 
tavern. Here they showed me the identical room where Andre 
was imprisoned. With the exception of new plastering, it 
remains the same as then. It is long, low, and narrow, and 
being without furniture or fire-place, it still has rather a jail- 
like look. I was sorry for the new plastering, for I hoped to 
find some record of prison thoughts cut in the walls. Two 
doves were cuddled together on a bench in one corner, and 
looked in somewhat melancholy mood. These mates were all 
alone in that silent apartment, where Andre shed bitter tears 
over the miniature of his beloved. Alas for mated human 
hearts ! This world is too often for them a pilgrimage of 
sorrow. 

The miniature, which Andre made such strong efforts to 
preserve, when everything else was taken from him, and which 
he carried next his heart till the last fatal moment, is generally 
supposed to have been a likeness of the beautiful, graceful, and 
highly-gifted Honora Sneyd, who married Richard Level 
Edge worth, and thus became step-mother to the celebrated 
Maria Edge worth. A strong youthful attachment existed 
between her and Major Andre ; but for some reason or other, 
they separated. He entered the army, and died the death of a 
felon. Was he a felon ? No. He was generous, kind, and 
brave. His noble nature was perverted by the maxims of war ; 



LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 131 

but the act lie committed for the British army, was what an 
American officer would have gloried in doing for his own. 
Washington employed spies ; nor is it probable that he, or any 
other military commander, would have hesitated to become one, 
if by so doing, he could get the enemy completely into his 
power. It is not, therefore, a sense of justice, but a wish to 
inspire terror, which leads to the execution of spies. War is 
a game, in which the devil plays at nine-pins with the souls of 
men. 

Early the next morning, we rose before the sun, and took a 
waggon ride, of ten miles, to Rockland Lake. The road was 
exceedingly romantic. On one side, high, precipitous hills, 
covered with luxuriant foliage, or rising in perpendicular 
masses of stone, singularly like the fagade of some ruined 
castle ; on the other side, almost near enough to dip our hands 
in its water, flowed the broad Hudson, with a line of glittering 
light along its edge, announcing the coming sun. Our path 
lay straight over the high hills, full of rolling stones and 
innumerable elbows ; for it went round about to avoid every 
rock, as a good, old-fashioned Dutch path should, in prophetic 
contempt of railroads. But all around was verdure, abundance, 
and beauty ; and we could have been well content to wind 
round and round among those picturesque hills, like Peter 
Kugg, in his everlasting ride, had not the advancing sun given 
premonitory symptoms of the fiercest heat. We plainly saw 
that he was pulling the corn up by the hair of its head, and 
making the grass grow with a forty-horse power. At last, the 
lake itself opened upon us, with whole troops of lilies. This 
pure sheet of water, more than a mile long, is enclosed by a 
most graceful sweep of hills, verdant with foliage, and dotted 
with golden grain. It is as beautiful a scene as my eye ever 
rested on. "A piece of heaven let fall to earth." At the 
farm where we lodged, a summer-house was placed on a verdant 
curve, which swelled out into the lake, as if a breeze had 
floated it there in play. There I sat all day long, too happy to 
talk. Never did I thus throw myself on the bosom of nature, 
as it were on the heart of my dearest friend. The cool rippling 
of the water, the whirring of a humming-bird, and the happy 
notes of some little warbler, tending her nest directly over 
our heads, was all that broke silence in that most beautiful 
temple. 

After a while, our landlord came among us. He had been 



132 LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 

a sailor, soldier, Indian doctor, and farmer ; but the incidents 
of his changing life had for him no deeper significance than 
the accumulation of money. 

I sighed, that man alone should be at discord with the 
harmony of nature. But the bird again piped a welcome to 
her young ; and no other false note intruded on the universal 
hymn of earth, and air, and sky. 

At twilight, we took boat, and went paddling about among 
the shadows of the green hills. I wept when I gave a fare- 
well look to Kockland Lake ; for I had no hope that I should 
ever again see her lovely face, or listen to her friendly voice ; 
and none but Him, who speaks through nature, can ever know 
what heavenly things she w^hispered in my ear, that happy 
summer's day. 



LETTER XXYI. 

FLOWERS ALL BEING SPIRALLY LINKED. 

September 1, 1842. 

From childhood, I have had a most absorbing passion for 
flowers. What unheard of quantities of moss and violets have 
I trailed from their shady birth-place, to some little nook, 
which fate allowed me, for the time being, to call my home 1 
And then, how I have pitied the poor things, and feared they 
would not be so happy, as if I had left them alone. Yet 
flowers ever seemed to thrive with me, as if they knew I 
loved them. Perchance they did ; for invisible radii, inaudible 
language, go forth from the souls of all things. Nature ever 
sees and hears it ; as man would, were it not for his self-listening. 

The flowers have spoken to me more than I can tell in 
written words. They are the hieroglyphics of angels, loved by 
all men for the beauty of the character, though few can 
decypher even fragments of their meaning. Minerals, flowers, 
and birds among a thousand other triune ideas, ever speak to 
me of the past, the present, and the future. The past, like 
minerals, with their fixed forms of gorgeous but unchanging 
beauty ; the present, like flowers, growing and ever changing 
— bud, blossom, and seed-vessel — seed, bud, and blossom, in 



LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 133 

endless progi'ession ; the future, like birds, witli winged aspira- 
tions, and a voice that sings into the clouds. Not separate are 
past, present, and future ; but one evolved from the other, 
like the continuous, ever-rising line of the spiral : and not 
separate are minerals, vegetables, and animals. The same 
soul pervades them all ; they are but higher and higher types 
of the self-same ideas ; spirally they rise, one out of the other. 
Strike away one curve in the great growth of the universe, 
and the stars themselves would fall. Some glimpses of these 
arcana were revealed to the ancients ; hence the spiral line 
occurs frequently among the sacred and mysterious emblems 
in their temples. 

There is an astronomical theory that this earth, by a suc- 
cession of spiral movements, is changing its position, until its 
poles will be brought into harmonious relation with the poles 
of the heavens : then sunshine will equally overspread the 
globe, and spring become perpetual. I know not whether this 
theory be correct ; but I think it is — for reasons not at all 
allied with astronomical knowledge. If the millennium, so long 
prophesied, ever comes ; if the lion and the lamb ever lie down 
together within the souls of men, the outward world must 
likewise come into divine order, and the poles of the earth will 
harmonise with the poles of the heavens ; then shall universal 
spring reign without, the emblem and offspring of universal 
peace within. 

Everywhere in creation, we find visible types of these 
ascending series. Everything is interlinked ; each reaches one 
hand upward and one downward, and touching palms, each is 
interclasped with all above and all below. Plainly is this 
truth written on the human soul, both in its individual and 
universal progress ; and therefore it is inscribed on all material 
forms. But yesterday, I saw a plant called the crab cactus, 
most singularly like the animal from which it takes its name. 
My companion said it was "a strange freak of nature." But 
I knew it was no freak. I saw that the cactus and the crab 
meant the same thing — one on a higher plane than the other. 
The singular plant was the point where fish and vegetable 
touched palms ; where the ascending spiral circles passed into 
each other. There is another cactus that resembles the sea- 
urchin ; and another, like the star-fish. In fact, they all seem 
allied to the crustaceous tribe of animals ; and from the idea, 
which this embodies, sprung the fancy that fairies of the earth 



134 LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 

sometimes formed strange union with morrows of the sea. 
Every fancy, the wildest and the strangest, is somewhere in 
the universe of God, a fact, a reality. 

Another indication of interlinking series is found in the 
zoophytes, the strangest of all links between the vegetable and 
animal world ; sometimes growing from a stem like a plant, 
and radiating like a blossom, yet devouring insects and digest- 
ing them like an animal. Behold minerals in their dark 
mines ! how they strive toward efflorescence, in picturesque 
imitation of foliage and tendrils, and roots, and tangled vines. 
Such minerals are approaching the circle of creation that lies 
above them, and from which they receive their life ; mineral 
and vegetable here touch palms, and pass the electric fluid that 
pervades all life. 

As the approach of different planes in existence is indicated 
in forms, so is it in character and uses. Among minerals, the 
magnet points ever to the north ; so is there a plant in the 
prairies, called by travellers the Polar plant, or Indian compass, 
because the plane of its leaf points due north and south, with- 
out other variation than the temporary ruffling of the breeze. 

If these secrets were clearly read, they might throw much 
light on the science of healing, and perhaps reconcile the 
clashing claims of mineral and vegetable medicines. Doubtless, 
every substance in nature is an antidote to some physical evil ; 
owing to some spiritual cause, as fixed as the laws of mathe- 
matics, but not as easily perceived. The toad, when bitten by 
a spider, goes to the plantain leaf, and is cured ; the bird, 
when stung by the yellow serpent, flies to the Guaco plant, 
and is healed. If we knew what sjDiritual evil was represented 
by the spider's poison, and what spiritual good by the plantain 
leaf, we should probably see the mystery revealed. Good 
always overcomes the evil, which is its perverted form ; thus 
love casteth out hatred, truth overcomes falsehood, and 
suspicion cannot live before perfect frankness. Always and 
everywhere is evil overcome with good ; and because it is so 
in the soul of man, it is and must be so in all the laws and 
operations of the nature of God. 

' ' There are influences yet unthought, and virtues, and many inventions. 
And uses, above and around, which man hath not yet regarded. 

There be virtues yet unknowai in the wasted foliage of the elm, 

In the sun-dried harebell of the downs, and the hyacinth drinkmg in 
the meadows : 



LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 135 

In the sycamore's -vvinged fruit, and the facet-cut cones of the cedar ; 
And the pansy and bright geranium live not alone for beauty, 
Nor the waxen flower of the arbute, though it dieth in a day ; 
Nor the sculptured crest of the fir, unseen but by the stars ; 
And the meanest weed of the garden serveth unto many uses ; 
The salt tamarisk, and juicy flag, the freckled arum and the daisy. 
For every green herb, from the lotus to the darnel, 
Is rich with delicate aids to help incurious man." 

" There is a final cause for the aromatic gum, that congealeth the moss 

around a rose ; 
A reason for each blade of grass, that reareth its small spire. 
How knoweth discontented man what a train of ills might follow 
If the lowest menial of nature knew not her sacred office ? 
In the perfect circle of creation not an atom could be spared, 
From earth's magnetic zone to the bindweed round a hawthorn. 
The briar and the palm have the wages of life, rendering secret service." 

I did not intend to write thus mystically ; and I feel that 
these are thoughts that should be spoken into your private 
ear, not published to the world. To some few they may, 
perchance, awaken a series of aspiring thoughts, till the hio-hest 
touch the golden harps of heaven, and till the world with 
celestial echoes. But to many they will seem an ambitious 
attempt to write something, which is in fact nothing. Be it 
so. I have spoken in a language which few may understand, 
and none can teach or learn. It writes itself in sunbeams of 
flowers, gems, and an infinity of forms, I know it at a glance ; 
but I learned it in no school. When I go home and shut the 
door, it speaks to me, as if it were a voice ; but amid the 
multitude, the sound is hushed. 

This, which people call the real world, is not real to me ; all 
its sights seem shadows, all its sounds echoes. I live at service 
in it, and sweep dead leaves out of paths, and dust mirrors, 
and do errands, as I am bid ; but glad am I, when work is 
done, to go home to rest. Then do I enter a golden palace, 
with light let in from above ; and all forms of beauty are on 
the walls, from the seraph before God's throne, to the rose- 
tinted shell on the sea-shore. 

I strove not to speak in mysticism ; and lo, here I am, as 
the Germans would say, " up in the blue " again. I know not 
how it is, my thoughts to-day are like birds of paradise ; they 
have no feet, and will not light on earth. 

I began to write about flowers with the most simplicity ; 
not meaning to twine of them a spiral ladder of garlands from 



136 LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 

earth to heaven. The whole fabric arose from my looking into 
the blue eyes of my German Forget-me-not, which seems so 
much like a babe just wakening from a pleasant dream. Then 
my heart blessed flowers from its inmost depths. I thought of 
the beautiful story of the Italian child laid on the bed of death, 
with a wreath among his golden ringlets, and a bouquet in his 
little cold hand. They had decked him thus for the angels ; 
but when they went to place him in his coffin, lo, the little 
cherub was sitting up playing with the flowers. 

How the universal heart of man blesses flowers ! They are 
wreathed round the cradle, the marriage altar, and the tomb. 
The Persian in the far east delights in their perfume, and 
writes his love in nosegays ; while the Indian child of the far 
west clasps his hands with glee, as he gathers the abundant 
blossoms — the illuminated scripture of the prairies. The Cupid 
of the ancient Hindoos tipped his arrows with flowers, and 
orange buds are the bridal crown with us, a nation of yester- 
day. Flowers garlanded the Grecian altar, and they hang in 
votive wreaths before the Christian shrine. 

All these are appropriate uses. Flowers should deck the 
brow of the youthful bride, for they are in themselves a lovely 
type of marriage. They should festoon the altar, for their 
fragrance and their beauty ascend in perpetual worshij) before 
the Most High. 



LETTEK XXYII. 

MUSIC AND LIGHT THE MUSICAL INSTRUMENT INVENTED BY 

GUZIKOW MUSIC OF THE PLANETS THE BURNING BELL 

TOWER AT HAMBURG MYSTERIOUS MUSIC IN PACAGOULA BAY 

THE MOCKING BIRD AND THE BOB-O' LINK — THE RESPONSE 

OF MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS TO EACH OTHER. 

September 8, 1842. 

It is curious to observe by what laws ideas are associated ; 
how, from the tiniest seed of thought, rises the unbrageous tree, 
with moss about its foot, blossoms on its head, and birds 
among its branches. Reading my last letter, concerning the 
spiral series of the universe, some busy little spirit suggested 
that there should, somewhere in creation, be a flower that 
made music. But I said, do they not all make melody ? The 



LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 137 

Persians write tlieir music in colours ; and perchance, in the 
arrangement of flowers, angels may perceive songs and 
anthems. The close relationship between light and music has 
been more less dimly perceived by the human mind every- 
where. The Persian, when he gave to each note a colour, 
probably embodied a greater mystery than he understood. The 
same undefined perception makes us talk of the harmony of 
colours, and the tone of a picture ; it led the blind man to say 
that his ideas of red was like the sound of a trumpet ; and it 
led Festus to speak of " a rainbow of sweet sounds." John S. 
Dwight was insjnred with the same idea, when he eloquently 
described music as " a prophecy of Avhat life is to be ; the rain- 
bow of promise translated out of seeing into hearing." 

But I must not trust myself to trace the beautiful analogy 
between light and music. As I muse upon it, it is like an open- 
ing between clouds, so transparent and so deep, deep, that it 
seems as if one could see through it beyond the farthest star^ — 
if one could but gaze long and earnestly enough. 

" Every flower writes music on the air ;" and every tree that 
grows enshrines a tone within its heart. Do you doubt if? 
Try the willow and the oak, the elm and the poplar, and see 
whether each has not its own peculiar sound, waiting only for 
the master's hand to make them discourse sweet music. One 
of the most remarkable instruments ever invented gives proof 
of this. M. Guzikow was a Polish Jew ; a shepherd in the 
service of a nobleman. From earliest childhood, music seemed 
to pervade his whole being. As he tended his flock in the 
loneliness of the fields, he was for ever fashioning flutes and 
reeds from the trees that grew around him. He soon observed 
that the tune of the flute varied according to the wood he used ; 
by degrees he came to know every tree by its sound ; and the 
forests stood round him a silent oratorio. The skill with which 
he played on his rustic flutes attracted attention. The nobility 
invited him to their houses, and he became a favourite of for- 
tune. Men never grew weary of hearing him. But soon it 
was perceived that he was pouring forth the fountains of his 
life in song. Physicians said he must abjure the flute, or die. 
It was a dreadful sacrifice, for music to him was life. His 
old familiarity with tones of the forest came to his aid. He 
took four round sticks of wood, and bound them closely together 
with bands of straw; across these he arranged numerous pieces 
of round, smooth wood of diflerent kinds. They were arranged 



138 LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 

irregularly to the eye, though harmoniously to the ear; for some 
j utted beyond the straw-bound foundation at one end, and some 
to the other; in and ovit in apparent confusion. The whole was 
lashed together with twine, as men would fasten a raft. This 
was laid on a common table, and struck with two small ebony 
sticks. E-ude as the instrument appeared, Guzikow brought from 
it such rich and liquid melody, that it seemed to take the heart 
of man on its wings, and bear it aloft to the throne of God. 
They who have heard it, describe it as far exceeding even the 
miraculous warblings of Paganini's violin. The Emperor of 
Austria heard it, and forthwith took the Polish peasant into 
his own especial service. In some of the large cities, he now 
and then gave a concert, by royal permission ; and on such an 
occasion he was heard by a friend of mine at Hamburg. 

The countenance of the musician was very pale and haggard, 
and his large dark eyes wildly expressive. He covered his 
head, according to the custom of the Jews ; but the small cap 
of black velvet was not to be distinguished in colour from the 
jet black hair that fell from under it, and flowed over his 
shoulders in glossy, natural ringlets. He wore the costume of 
his people, an ample robe, that fell about him in graceful folds. 
From head to foot all was black, as his own hair and eyes, re- 
lieved only by the burning brilliancy of a diamond on his breast. 
The butterflies of fashion were of course attracted by the 
unusual and poetic beauty of his appearance ; and ringlets a 
la Guzikow were the order of the day. 

Before this singularly gifted being stood a common wooden 
table on w^hich reposed his rude-looking invention. He touched 
it with the ebony sticks. At first you heard a sound as of 
wood ; the orchestra rose higher and higher, till it drowned its 
voice : then gradually subsiding, the wonderful instrument rose 
above other sounds, clear, warbling like a nightingale ; the 
orchestra rose higher, like the coming of the breeze — but above 
them all, swelled the sweet tones of the magic instrument, 
rich, liquid, and strong, like the sky-lark piercing the heavens ! 
They who heard it listened in delighted wonder, that the trees 
could be made to speak thus under the touch of genius. 

There is something pleasant to my imagination in the fact 
that every tree has its own peculiar note, and is a performer in 
the great concert of the universe, which for ever rises before 
the throne of Jehovah. But when the idea is applied to man, 
it is painful in the extreme. The Emperor of Bussia is said 



LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 139 

to have an imperial band, in which each man is doomed all his 
life long to sound one note, that he may acquire the greatest 
possible j^erfection. The effect of the whole is said to be 
admirable ; but nothing would tempt me to hear this human 
musical machine. A tree is a unit in creation ; though, like 
everything else, it stands in relation to all things. But every 
human soul represents the universe. There is horrible pro- 
fanation in compelling a living spirit to utter but one note. 
Theological sects strive to do this continually ; for they are sects 
because they magnify some one attribute of Deity, or see but 
one aspect of the divine government. To me, their fragmentary 
echoes are most discordant ; but doubtless the angels who listen 
to them as a whole may perhaps hear a pleasant chorus. 

Music, whether I listen to it, or try to analyze it, ever fills 
me with thoughts which I cannot express — because I cannot 
sing ; for nothing but music can express the emotions to which 
it gives birth. Language, even the richest flow of metaphor, 
is too poor to do it. That the universe moves to music, I have 
no doubt ; and could I but penetrate this mystery, where the 
finite passes into the infinite, I should surely know how the 
world was created. Pythagoras supposed that the heavenly 
bodies in their motion, produced music inaudible to mortal 
ears. These motions he believed conformed to certain fixed 
laws, that could be stated in numbers, corresponding to the 
numbers which express the harmony of sounds. This "music 
of the spheres " has been considered an idea altogether 
fanciful ; but the immortal Kepler applied the Pythagorean 
theory of numbers, and musical intervals, to the distance of 
the planets ; and a long time after, Newton discovered and 
acknowledged the importance of the application. Said I not 
that the universe moved to music 1 The planets dance before 
Jehovah, and music is the echo of their motions. Surely the ear 
of Beethoven had listened to it when he wrote these misnamed 
"waltzes" of his, which, as John S. Dwight says, "remind us 
of no dance, unless it be the dances of the heavenly systems in 
their sublime career through space." 

Have you ever seen Ketszch's illustration of Schiller's Song 
of a Bell ] If you have, and know how to appreciate its speak- 
ing gracefulness, its earnest depth of life, you are richer than 
Rothschild or Astor ; for a vision of beauty is an everlasting 
inlieritance. Perhaps none but a German would have thus en- 
twined the sound of a bell with the whole of human life ; for 



140 LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 

Avith them the bell mingles with all of mirth, sorrow, and wor- 
ship. Almost all the German and Belgian towns are provided 
with chiming bells, which play at noon and evening. There 
was such a set of musical bells on the church of St. Nicholas, at 
Hamburg. The bell-player was a grey-headed man, who had 
for many years rung forth the sonorous chimes, that told the 
hours to the busy throng below. When the church was on fire, 
either from infirmity or want of thought, the old man remained 
at his post. In the terrible confusion of the blazing city, no 
one thought of him, till the high steeple was seen wreathed 
with flame. As the throng gazed upward, the firm walls of the 
old church, that had stood for ages, began to shake. At that 
moment the bells sounded the well-known German chorale, 
which usually concludes the Protestant service, "Nun danket 
alle Gott" — " Now all thank God." Another moment and 
there was an awful crash ! The bells, which had spoken into 
the hearts of so many generations, went silent for ever. They 
and the old musician sunk together into a fiery grave ; but 
the echo of their chimes goes sounding on through the far 
eternity. 

They have a beautiful custom at Hamburg. At ten o'clock 
in the morning, when men are hurrying hither and yon in the 
great whirl^^ool of business, from the high church tower comes 
down the sound of sacred music, from a large and powerful horn 
appropriated to that service. It is as if an angel spake from the 
clouds, reminding them of immortality. 

You have doubtless heard of the mysterious music that peals 
over the bay at West Pascagoula. It has for a long time been 
one of the greatest wonders of the south-west. Multitudes have 
heard it, rising as it were from the water, like the drone of a 
bagpipe, then floating away — away — away — in the distance — 
soft, plaintive, and fairy-like, as if ^'Eolian harps sounded with 
richer melody through the liquid element ; but none have been 
able to account for the beautiful phenomenon. 

" There are several legends touching these mysterious sounds. 
One of them relates to the extinction of the Pascagoula tribe of 
Indians, the remnant of wdiich, many years ago, it is said, 
deliberately entered the waters of the bay and drowned them- 
selves, to escape capture and torture, when attacked by a neigh- 
bouring formidable tribe. There is another legend, as well 
authenticated as traditionar}^ history can well be, to the efiect, 
that about one hundred years ago, three families of Spaniards, 



LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 141 

who had provoked the resentment of the Indians, were beset by 
the savages, and to avoid massacre and pollution, marched into 
the bay, and were drowned — men, women, and children. Tra- 
dition adds, that the Spaniards went down to the waters fol- 
lowing a drum and pipe, and singing, as enthusiasts are said to 
do, when about to commit self-immolation. The slaves in the 
neighbourhood believe that the sounds which sweep with mourn- 
ful cadence over the bay, are uttered by the spirits of those 
hapless families; nor will any remonstrance against the supersti- 
tion abate their terror, when the wailing is heard." Formerly 
neither threats nor blows could induce them to venture out 
after night; and to this day, it is exceedingly difficult to in- 
duce one of them to go in a boat alone upon the quiet waters 
of Pascagoula Bay. One of them, being asked by a recent 
traveller what he thought occasioned that music, replied: 

"Well, I tink it's dead folks come back agin: dat's what I 
does. White people say it's dis ting and dat ting; but it's 
noting, massa, but de ghosts of people wat didn't die nat'rally 
in dere beds long time ago — Indians or Spaniards, I believes 
dey was." 

'•'But does the music never frighten you?" 

"Well, it does. Sometimes wen I'se out alone on de bay in 
a skiff, and I hears it about, I always finds myself in a i)er- 
spiration, and de way I works my way home is of de fastest 
kind. I declare de way I'se frightened sometimes is so bad I 
doesn't know myself." 

But in these days few things are allowed to remain mys- 
terious. A correspondent of the Baltimore Bepublican thus 
explains the music of the water spirits: — 

"During several of my voyages on the Spanish main, in the 
neighbourhood of 'Paraguay,' and San Juan de Nicaragua^ 
from the nature of the coast, we were compelled to anchor at a 
considerable distance from the shore; and every evening, from 
dark to late night, our ears were delighted with ^olian music, 
that could be heard beneath the counter of our schooner. At 
first I thought it was the sea-breeze sweeping through the 
strings of my violin (the bridge of which I had inadvertently 
left standing), but after examination I found it was not so. I 
then placed my ear on the rail of the vessel, when I was con- 
tinually charmed with the most heavenly strains that ever fell 
upon my ear. They did not sound as close to us, but were 
sweet, mellow, and aerial, like the soft breathings of a thousand 



142 LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 

lutes, touclied by fingers of the deep sea-iiym^Dlis at an immense 
distance. 

"Although I have considerable 'music in my soul,' one night 
I became tired, and determined to fish. My luck in half an 
hour was astonishing; I had half filled my bucket with the 
finest white cat-fish I ever saw; and it being late, and the cook 
asleep, and the moon shining, I filled my bucket with water 
and took fish and all into my cabin for the night. 

"I had not yet fallen asleep, when the same sweet notes fell 
upon my ear, and getting up, what was my surprise to find my 
' cat-fish ' discoursing sweet sounds to the sides of my bucket. 

"I examined them closely, and discovered that there was 
attached to each lower lip an excrescence divided by soft, wiry 
fibres. By the pressure of the upper lip thereon, and by the 
exhalation and discharge of breath, a vibration was created 
similar to that produced by the breath on the tongue of the 
Jew's harp." 

So you see the Naiads have a band to dance by. I should 
like to have the mocking bird try his skill at imitating this 
submarine melody. You know the Bob-o'link with his 
inimitable strain of "linked sweetness, long drawn out?" At 
a farm house occupied by my father-in-law, one of these rich 
warblers came and seated himself on a rail near the w^indow, 
and began to sing. A cat-bird (our New England mocking 
bird) perched near, and began to imitate the notes. The short, 
quick, " bob-o'link " bob-o'link," he could master very well ; but 
when it came to the prolonged trill of gushing melody, at the 
close of the strain — the imitator stopped in the midst. Again 
the bob-o'link poured forth his soul in song ; the mocking- 
bird hopped nearer, and listened most intently. Again he 
tried ; but it was all in vain. The bob-o'link, as if conscious 
that none could imitate his God-given tune, sent forth a clearer, 
stronger, richer strain that ever. The mocking-bird evidently 
felt that his reputation was at stake. He warbled all kinds of 
notes in quick succession. You would have thought the house 
was surrounded by robins, sparrows, whippowills, blackbirds 
and linnets. Having shown of his accomj^lishments, he again 
tried his powers on the altogether inimitable trill. The efibrt 
he made was prodigious ; but it was mere talent trying to copy 
genius. He couldn't do it. He stopped, gasping, in the midst 
of the prolonged melody, and flew away abruptly, in evident 
vexation. 



LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 143 

Music, like everything else, is now passing from the few to 
the many. The art of printing has hiid before the multitude 
the written wisdom of ages, once locked up in the elaborate 
manuscripts of tlie cloister. Engraving and photography 
spread the productions of the pencil before the whole people. 
Music is taught in our common schools, and the cheap 
accordion brings its delights to the humblest artisan. All 
these things are full of prophecy. Slowly, slowly, to the 
measured sound of the spirit's music, there goes round the 
world the golden band of brotherhood; slowly, slowly, the 
earth comes to its place, and makes a chord with heaven. 

Sing on, thou true-hearted, and be not discouraged! If a 
harp be in perfect tune, and a flute, or otlier instrument of 
music, be near it, and in j)erfect tune also, thou canst not play 
on one without wakening an answer from the other. Behold, 
thou shalt hear its sweet echo in the air, as if played on by the 
invisible. Even so shall other spirits vibrate to the harmony 
of thine. Utter what God giveth thee to say. In the sunny 
West Indies, in gay and graceful Paris, in frozen Iceland, and 
the deep stillness of the Hindoo jungle, thou wilt wake a 
slumbering echo, to be carried on for ever throughout the 
universe. In word and act sing thou of united truth and love ; 
another voice shall take up the strain over the waters; soon it 
will become a world concert ; — and thou above there, in that 
realm of light and love, well pleased wilt hear thy early song, 
in earth's sweet vibration to the harps of heaven. 



LETTEE XXYIII. 

THE LITTLE MATCH GIRL BEAUTIFUL ANECDOTE OF A STREET 

MUSICIAN ANECDOTE OF A SPANISH DONKEY — HORSES 

TAMED BY KINDNESS — THE ONE VOICE, WHICH BROUGHT 
A DISCORDANT CHOIR INTO HARMONY. 

September 29, 1842. 

I WISH I could walk abroad without having misery forced on 
my notice, whicli I liave no power to relieve. The other day, 
I looked out of my window, and saw a tall, gaunt-looking 
woman leading a little ragged girl, of Ave or six years old. The 



144 LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 

child carried a dirty little basket, and I observed that she went 
up to every door, and stood on tiptoe to reach the bell. From 
every one, as she held up her little basket, she turned away 
and came down the steps so wearily, and looked so sad — so 
very sad. I saw this repeated at four or five doors, and my 
heart began to swell within me. " I cannot endure this," 
thought I : "I must buy whatever her basket contains." Then 
prudence answered, " Where's the use 1 Don't you meet 
twenty objects more wretched every day? Where can you 
stop 1 I moved from my window ; but as I did so, I saw my 
guardian angel turn away in sorrow. I felt that neither 
incense nor anthem would rise before God from that selfish 
second thought. I went to the door. Another group of 
sufiering creatures were coming from the other end of the 
street ; and I turned away again, with the feeling that there 
was no use in attending to the hopeless mass of misery around 
me. I should have closed the door, perhaps, but as the little 
girl came near, I saw on her neck a cross, with a rudely carved 
image of the crucified Saviour. Oh, blessed Jesus ! friend of 
the poor, the sufiering, and the guilty, who is like thee to 
guide the erring soul, and soften the selfish heart 1 The tears 
gushed to my eyes. I bought from the little basket a store of 
matches for a year. The woman offered me change ; but I 
could not take it in sight of that cross. " In the Saviour's 
name, take it all," I said, "and buy clothes for that little one." 
A gleam lighted up the woman's hard features ; she looked 
surprised and grateful. But the child grabbed at the money, 
with a hungry avarice, that made my very heart ache. 
Hardship, privation, and perchance severity, had changed the 
genial heart warmth, the gladsom^e thoughtlessness of childhood, 
into the grasping sensuality of a world-trodden soul. It 
seemed to me the saddest thing that in all God's creation 
there should be one such little child, I almost feared they had 
driven the angels away from her. But it is not so. Her 
angel, too, does always stand before the face of her Father, who 
is in Heaven. 

This time, I yielded to the melting of my heart ; but a 
hundred times a week, I drive back the generous impulse, 
because I have not the means to gratify it. This is the misery 
of a city like New York, that a kindly spirit not only suffers 
continual pain, but is obliged to do itself perpetual wrong. At 
times, I almost fancy I can feel myself turning to stone by 



LETTERS FilOM NEW YORK. 145 

inches. Gladly, oli, how c^ladly, do I hail any little sunbeam 
of love, that breaks through this cloud of misery and wrong. 

The other day, as I came down Broome Street, I saw a 
street musician, playing near the door of a genteel dwelling. 
The organ was uncommonly sweet and mellow in its tones, the 
tunes were slow and plaintive, and I fancied that I saw 
in the woman's Italian face an expression that indicated 
sufficient refinement to prefer the tender and the melancholy, 
to the "lively tunes" in vogue with the populace. She looked 
like one who had suffered much, and the sorrowful music seem- 
ed her own appropriate voice. A little girl clung to her scanty 
garments, as if afraid of all things but her mother. As I looked 
at them, a young lady of pleasing countenance opened the 
window, and began to sing like a bird, in keeping with the street 
organ. Two other young girls came and leaned on her shoulder; 
and still she sang on. Blessings on her gentle heart ! It was 
evidently the spontaneous gush of human love and sympathy. 
The beauty of the incident attracted attention. A group of 
gentlemen gradually collected around the organist ; and ever 
as the tune ended, they bowed respectfully towards the window, 
waved their hats, and called out, " More, if you please !" One, 
whom I knew well for the kindest and truest soul, passed round 
his hat ; hearts were kindled, and the silver fell in freely. In 
a minute four or five dollars were collected for the poor woman. 
She spoke no word of gratitude, but she gave such a look ! 
" Will you go to the next street, and play to a friend of mine V 
said my kind-hearted friend. She answered, in tones express- 
ing the deepest emotion, " No, Sir, God bless you all — God 
bless you all" (making a courtesy to the young lady, who had 
stept back, and stood sheltered by the curtain of the window), 
" I will play no more to-day ; I will go home now !" The tears 
trickled down her cheeks, and as she walked away, she ever 
and anon wiped her eyes with the corner of her shawl. The 
group of gentlemen lingered a moment to look after her, then 
turning towards the now closed window, they gave three en- 
thusiastic cheers, and departed, better than they came. The 
]>avement on which they stood had been a church to them ; and 
for the next hour, at least, their hearts were more than usually 
prepared for deeds of gentleness and mercy. Why are such 
scenes so uncommon 1 Why do we thus repress our sympathies, 
anh chill the genial current of nature, by formal observances 
and restraints 1 



146 LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 

I thank my heavenly Father for every manifestation of 
human love. I thank him for all experiences, be they sweet 
or bitter, which help me to forgive all things, and to enfold the 
whole world with blessing. " What shall be our reward," 
savs Swedenborof, " for lovin2: our neisjhbours as ourselves 
in this life 1 That when we become angels, we shall be enabled 
to love him better than ourselves." This is a reward pure 
and holy ; the only one which my heart has not rejected, 
whenever offered as an incitement to goodness. It is this 
chiefly which makes the happiness of lovers more nearly allied 
to heaven, than any other emotions experienced by the human 
heart. Each loves the other better than himself; each is will- 
ing to sacrifice all to the other — nay, finds joy therein. That 
it is that surrounds them with a golden atmosphere, and tinges 
the world with rose-colour. A mother's love has the same 
angelic character. More completely unselfish, but lacking the 
charm of perfect reciprocity. 

The cure for all the ills and wrongs, the cares, the sorrows, 
and the crimes of humanity, all lie in that one word, love. It 
is the divine vitality that everywhere produces and restores 
life. To each and every one of us it gives the power of work- 
ing miracles, if we will but embody it in act. 

' ' Love is the story without an end, tliat angels throng to hear ; 
The word, the king of words, carved on Jehovah's heart." 

From the highest to the lowest, all feel its influence, all 
acknowledge its sway. Even the poor, despised donkey is 
changed by its magic influence. When coerced and beaten, he 
is vicious, obstinate, and stupid. With the peasantry of Spain, 
he is a petted favourite, almost an inmate of the household. 
The children bid him welcome home, and the wife feeds him 
from her hands. He knows them all, and he loves them all, 
for he feels in his inmost heart that they all love him. He 
will follow his master, and come and go at his bidding, like a 
faithful dog ; and he delights to take the baby on his back, and 
walk him round, gently, on the greensward. His intellect 
expands, too, in the sunshine of affection ; and he that is called 
the stupidest of animals, becomes sagacious. A Spanish 
peasant had for many years carried milk into Madrid, to supply 
a set of customers. Every morning he and his donkey, with 
loaded panniers, trudged the well-known round. At last, the 
peasant became very ill, and had no one to send to market. 



I 



LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 147 

His wife proposed to send the faithful old animal by himself. 
The panniers were accordingly filled with cannisters of milk, 
an inscription, written by the priest, requested customers to 
measure their own milk, and return the vessels ; and the 
donkey was instructed to set ofi" with his load. He went, and 
i-eturned in due time with empty cannisters ; and this he con- 
tinued to do for several days. The house bells in Madrid are 
usually so constructed that you pull downward to make them 
ring. The peasant afterwards learned that his sagacious 
animal stopped before the door of every customer, and after 
waiting what he deemed a sufficient time, pulled the bell with 
his mouth. If afiectionate treatment will thus idealise the 
jackass, what may it not do 1 Assuredly there is no limit to 
its ])Ower. It can banish crime, and make this earth an Eden. 

The best tamer of colts that was ever known in Massachusetts 
never allowed whip or spur to be used ; and the horses he 
trained never needed the whip. Their spirits were unbroken 
by severity, and they obeyed the slightest impulse of the voice 
or rein, with the most animated promptitude ; but rendered 
obedient to affection, the vivacity was always restrained by 
graceful docility. He said it was with horses as with children ; 
if accustomed to beating, they would not obey without it. But 
if manacled with untirinsc gentleness, united with consistent 
and very equable firmness, the victory once gained over them 
was gained for ever. 

In the face of all these facts, the world goes on manufactur- 
ing whips, spurs, the gallows, and chains ; while each one 
carries within his own soul a divine substitute for these devil's 
inventions, with which he might work miracles, inward and 
outward, if he would. Unto this end let us work with un- 
faltering faith. Great is the strength of an individual soul, 
true to its high trust ; — mighty is it even to the redemption of 
a world. 

A German, whose sense of sound was exceeding acute, was 
passing by a church, a day or two after he had landed in this 
country, and the sound of music attracted him to enter, though 
he had no knowledge of our language. The music proved to 
be a piece of nasal psalmody, sung in most discordant fashion ; 
and the sensitive German would fain have covered his ears. 
As this was scarcely civil, and might appear like insanity, his 
next impulse was to rush into the open air, and leave the 
liated sounds behind him. " But this, too, I feared to do," 



148 LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 

said he, " lest offence might be given ; so I resolved to endure 
the torture with the best fortitude I could assume ; when lo I 
I distinguished, amid the din, the soft clear voice of a woman 
singing in perfect tune. She made no effort to drown the 
voices of her companions, neither w^as she disturbed by their 
noisy discord ; but patiently and sweetly she sang in full, rich 
tones ; one after another yielded to the gentle influence ; and 
before the tune was finished, all were in perfect harmony." 

I have often thought of this story as conveying an instructive 
lesson for reformers. The spirit that can thus sing patiently 
and sweetly in a world of discord, must indeed be of the 
strongest, as well as the gentlest kind. One scarce can hear 
his own soft voice amid the braying of the multitude ; and ever 
and anon comes the temptation to sing louder than they, and 
drown the voices that cannot thus be forced into perfect tune. 
But this w^ere a pitiful experiment ; the melodious tones, 
cracked into shrillness, avouIcI only increase the tumult. 

Stronger, and more frequently, comes the temptation to stop 
singing, and let discord do its own wild work. But blessed 
are they that endure to the end — singing patiently and sweetly, 
till all join in with loving acquiescence, and universal harmony 
prevails, without forcing into submission the free discord of a 
single voice. 

This is the hardest and bravest task, which a true soul has 
to perform amid the clashing elements of time. But once has 
it been done perfectly, unto the end ; and that voice, so clear 
in its meekness, is heard above all the din of a tumultuous 
world ; one after another chimes in wath its patient sweetness ; 
and, through infinite discords, the listening soul can perceive 
that the great tune is slowly coming into harmony. 



LETTER XXIX. 

BLACKWELL's island — LONG ISLAND FARMS — ANECDOTE FROM 
SILVIO PELLICO — A MODEL ALMS-HOUSE AMONG THE SOCIETY 
OF FRIENDS. 

October 6, 1842. 

I WENT last week to Blackwell's island, in the East river, 
between the city and Long Island. The environs of the city 
are unusually beautiful, considering how far autumn has 



LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 149 

advanced upon us. Frequent rains have coaxed vegetation 
into abundance, and preserved it in verdant beauty. The trees 
are hung with a profusion of vines, the rocks are dressed in 
nature's green velvet of moss, and from every little cleft peeps 
the rich foliage of some wind-scattered seed. The island itself 
presents a quiet loveliness of scenery, unsurpassed by anything 
I have ever witnessed ; though nature and I are old friends, 
and she has shown me many of her choicest pictures, in a light 
let in only from above. No form of gracefulness can compare 
with the bend of flowing waters all round and round a verdant 
island. The circle ty})ifies love ; and they who read the 
spiritual alphabet, will see that a circle of waters must needs 
be very beautiful. Beautiful it is, even when the language it 
speaks is an unknown tongue. Then the green hills beyond 
look so very pleasant in the sunshine, with homes nestling 
among them, like dimples on a smiling face. The island itself 
abounds with charming nooks — open wells in shady i)laces, 
screened by large weeping willows ; gardens and arbors running 
down to the river's edge to look at themselves in the waters ; 
and pretty boats, like white-winged birds, chased by their 
shadows, and breaking the waves into gems. 

But man has profaned this charming retreat. He has 
brought the screech-owl, the bat, and the vulture, into the holy 
temple of nature. The island belongs to Government; and the 
only buildings on it are j)enitentiary, mad-house, and hospital ; 
with a few dwellings occupied by people connected with those 
institutions. The discord between man and nature never 
before struck me so painfully ; yet it is wise and kind to place 
the erring and the diseased in the midst of such calm bright 
influences. Man may curse, but nature for ever blesses. The 
guiltiest of her wandering children she would fain enfold 
within her arms to the friendly heart-warmth of a mother's 
bosom. She speaks to them ever in the soft, low tones of 
earnest love ; but they, alas, tossed on the roaring stunning 
surge of society, forget the quiet language. 

As I looked up at the massive walls of the prison, it did my 
heart good to see doves nestling within the shelter of the deep, 
narrow, grated windows. I thought what blessed litth; 
messengers of heaven they would appear to me, if I were in 
prison ; but instantly a shadow passed over the sunshine of 
my thought. Alas, doves do not s]jeak to their souls, as they 
would to mine ; for they have lost their love for child-like, 



150 LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 

and gentle things. How have they lost it? Society with its 
unequal distribution, its perverted education, its manifold 
injustice, its cold neglect, its biting mockery, has taken from 
them the gifts of God. They are placed here, in the midst of 
green hills, and flowing streams, and cooing doves, after the 
heart is petrified against the genial influence of all such sights 
and sounds. 

As usual, the organ of justice (which phrenologists say is 
unusually developed in my head) was roused into great activity 
by the sight of prisoners. " Would you have them prey on 
society?" said one of my comj^anions. I answered, "I am 
troubled that society has first preyed upon them. I will not 
enter into an argument about the right of society to punish 
these sinners ; but I say she made them sinners. How much 
I have done towards it, by yielding to popular prejudices, 
obeying false customs, and sup^^ressing vital truths, I know not ; 
but doubtless I have done, and am doing, my share. God 
forgive me. If he dealt with us, as w^e deal with our brother, 
who could stand before him?" 

While I was there, they brought in the editors of the Flash, 
the Libertine, and the Weekly Ptake. My whole soul loathes 
such polluted publications; yet a sense of justice again made me 
refractory. These men were perhaps trained to such service by 
all the social influences they had ever known. They dared to 
publish what nine-tenths of all around them lived unreproved. 
Why should they be imprisoned, while others flourished in the 
full tide of editorial success, circulating papers as immoral, and 
perhaps more dangerous, because their indecency is slightly 
veiled? Why should the Weekly Kake be shut up, when 
daily rakes walk Broadway in fine broadcloth and velvet ? 

Many more than half the inmates of the Penitentiary were 
women ; and of course a large proportion of them were taken 
up as " street- walkers." The men who made them such, who, 
perchance, caused the love of a human heart to be its ruin, 
and changed tenderness into sensuality and crime — these men 
live in the " ceiled houses" of Broadway, and sit in council in 
the City Hall and pass " regulations" to clear the streets they 
have filled with sin. And do you suppose their poor victims do 
not feel the injustice of society thus regulated? Think you 
they respect the laws? Vicious they are, and they may be 
both ignorant and foolish ; but, nevertheless, they are too wise 
to respect such laws. Their whole being cries out that it is 



LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 151 

a mockery ; all their experience proves that society is a game 
of chance, where the cunning slip through, and the strong leap 
over. The criminal feels this, even when incapable of 
reasoning upon it. The laws do not secure his reverence, 
because he sees that their operation is unjust. The secrets of 
prisons, so far as they are revealed, all tend to show that the 
prevailing feeling of criminals, of all grades, is that they are 
wronged. What we call justice, they regard as an unlucky 
chance; and whosoever looks calmly and wisely into the 
foundations on which society rolls and tumbles, (I cannot say 
on which it rests, for its foundations heave like the sea), will 
perceive that they are victims of chance. 

For instance, everything in school-books, social remarks, 
domestic conversation, literature, public festivals, legislative 
proceedings, and popular honours, all teach the young soul 
that it is noble to retaliate, mean to forgive an insult, and 
unmanly not to resent a wrong. Animal instincts, instead of 
l)eing brought into subjection to the higher powers of the soul, 
are thus cherished into more than natural activity. Of three 
men thus educated, one enters the army, kills a hundred 
Indians, hangs their scalps on a tree, is made major-general, 
and considered a fitting candidate for the presidency. The 
second goes to the southwest to reside ; some " roarer'' calls 
him a rascal — a phrase not misapplied, perhaps, but necessary 
to be resented ; he agrees to settle the question of honour at 
ten paces, shoots his insulter through the heart, and is hailed 
by society as a brave man. The third lives in New York. A 
man enters his office, and true, or untrue, calls him a knave. 
He fights, kills his adversary, is tried by the laws of the land, 
and hung. These three men indulged the same passion, acted 
from the same motives, and illustrated the same education; 
yet how different their fate ! 

With regard to dishonesty, too — the maxims of trade, the 
customs of society, and the general unreflecting tone of public 
conversation, all tend to promote it. The man who lias made 
" good bargains," is wealthy and honoured ; yet the details of 
those bargains few would dare to pronounce good. Of two 
young men nurtured under such influences, one becomes a 
successful merchant ; five thousand dollars are borrowed of him ; 
he takes a mortgage on a house worth twenty thousand dollars ; 
in the absence of the owner, when sales are very dull, he ofiers 
the house for sale, to pay his mortgage ; he bids it in himself, 



152 LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 

for four tliousand dollars ; and afterwards persecutes and 
imprisons his dej^tor for the remaining thousand. Society calls 
him a shrewd business man, and pronounces his dinners 
excellent ; the chance is, he will be a magistrate before he 
dies. — The other young man is unsuccessful ; his necessities 
are great; he borrows some money from his employer's drawer, 
perhaps resolving to restore the same ; the loss is discovered 
before he has a chance to refund it ; and society sends him to 
Blackwell's Island, to hammer stones with highway robbers. 
Society made both these men thieves ; but punished the one, 
while she rewarded the other. That criminals so universally 
feel themselves victims of injustice, is one strong proof that it 
is true; for impressions entirely without foundation are not 
apt to become universal. If society does make its own 
criminals, how shall she cease to do it 1 It can be done only 
by a change in the structure of society, that will diminish the 
temptations to vice, and increase the encouragements to virtue. 
If we can abolish poverty, we shall have taken the greatest 
step toward the abolition of crime ; and this will be the final 
triumph of the gospel of Christ. Diversities of gifts will 
doubtless always exist ; for the law written on spirit, as well 
as on matter, is infinite in variety. But when the kingdom of 
God comes " on earth, as it is in heaven," there will not be 
found in any corner of it that poverty which hardens the heart 
under the severe pressure of physical sufiering, and stultifies 
the intellect with toil for mere animal wants. When public 
opinion regards wealth as a means, and not as an end, men 
will no longer deem penitentiaries a necessary evil ; for 
society will then cease to be a great school for crime. In the 
mean time, do penitentiaries and prisons increase or diminish 
the evils they are intended to remedy ? 

The superintendent at Blackwell told me, unasked, that ten 
years' experience had convinced him that the whole system 
tended to increase crime. He said of the lads who came there, 
a large proportion had already been in the house of refuge ; 
and a large proportion of those who left, afterwards went to 
Sing Sing. "It is as regular a succession as the classes in a 
college," said he, "from the House of Refuge to the Penitentiary, 
and from the Penitentiary to the State prison." I remarked 
that coercion tended to rouse all the bad passions in man's 
nature, and if long continued, hardened the whole character. 
" I know that," said he, " from my own experience ; all the 



LETTERS FROM !SEW YORK. 153 

•devil there is in me, rises up when a man attempts to compel 
me. But what can I do? I am obliged to be very strict. 
When my feelings tem^pt me to unusual indulgence, a bad 
use is almost always made of it. I see that the system 
fails to produce the effect intended ; but I cannot change the 
result." 

I felt that his words were true. He could not change the in- 
fluence of the system w^hile he discharged the duties of his office; 
for the same reason that a man cannot be at once a slave driver 
and missionary on a plantation. I allude to the necessities of 
the office, and do not mean to imply that the character of the 
individual was severe. On the contrary, the prisoners seemed 
to be made as comfortable as was compatible with their situation. 
There were watch-towers, with loaded guns, to prevent escape 
from the island ; but they conversed freely with each other as 
they worked in the sunshine, and very few of them looked 
wretched. Among those who were sent under guard to row 
us back to the city, was one Avho jested on his own situation, 
in a manner which showed plainly enough that he looked on 
the whole thing as a game of chance, in which he hap})ened to 
be the loser. Indulgence cannot benefit such characters. What 
is wanted is, that no human being should grow up without 
deep and friendly interest from the society round him ; and 
that none should feel himself the victim of injustice, because 
society punishes the very sins which it teaches, nay drives 
men to commit. The world would be in a happier condition 
if legislators spent half as much time and labour to prevent 
crime, as they do to punish it. The poor need houses of en- 
couragement, and society gives them houses of correction. 
Benevolent institutions and reformatory societies perform but 
a limited and temporary use. They do not reach the ground- 
work of evil ; and it is re-produced too rapidly for them to 
keep even the surface healed. The natural, s})ontaneous in- 
fluences of society should be such as to supply men with 
healthy motives, and give full, free play to the aflections and 
the faculties. It is horrible to see our young men goaded on 
by the fierce, speculating S2)irit of the age, from the contagion 
of which it is almost impossible to escape, and then see them 
tortured into madness, or driven to crime, by fluctuating changes 
of the money-market. The young soul is, as it were, entangled 
in the great merciless machine of a falsely constructed society ; 
the steam he had no hand in raisins:, whirls him hither and 



lo4 LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 

thither, and it is altogether a lottery-chance whether it crushes 
or propels him. 

Many who are mourning over the too obvious diseases of the 
world, will smile contemptuously at the idea of re-construction. 
But let them reflect a moment upon the immense changes that 
have already come over society. In the middle ages, both 
noble and peasant would have laughed loud and long at the 
prophecy of such a state of society as now exists in the free 
States of America ; yet here we are ! 

I by no means underrate modern improvements in the dis- 
cipline of prisons, or progressive meliorations in the criminal 
code. I rejoice in these things as facts, and still more as 
prophecy. Strong as my faith is that the time will come when 
war and prisons will both cease from the face of the earth, I 
am by no means blind to the great difficulties in the way of 
those who are honestly striving to make the best of things as 
they are. Violations of right, continued generation after 
generation, and interwoven into the whole structure of action 
and opinion, will continue troublesome and injurious, even for 
a long time after they are outwardly removed. Legislators 
and philanthropists may well be puzzled to know what to do 
with those who have become hardened in crime ; meanwhile, 
the highest wisdom should busy itself with the more important 
questions — How did these men become criminals 1 Are not 
social influences largely at fault 1 If society is the criminal, 
were it not well to reform society 1 

It is common to treat the inmates of penitentiaries and 
prisons as if they were altogether unlike ourselves — as if they 
belonged to another race ; but this indicates superficial thought 
and feeling. The passions which carried those men to prison 
exist in your own bosom, and have been gratified, only in a 
less degree ; perchance, if you look inward, with enlightened 
self-knowledge, you will perceive that there have been periods 
in your own life when a hair's-breadth further in the wrong 
would have rendered yoio amenable to human laws ; and that 
you were prevented from moving over that hair's-breadth 
boundary by outward circumstances, for which you deserve no 
credit. 

If reflections like these make you think lightly of sin, you 
pervert them to a very bad use. They should teach you that 
every criminal has a human heart, which can be reached and 
softened by the same means that will reach and soften your 



LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 155 

own. In all, even the most hardened, love lies folded up, per- 
chance buried ; and the voice of love calls it forth, and makes 
it gleam like living coals through ashes. This influence, if 
applied in season, would assuredly prevent the hardness which 
it has so much power to soften. 

That most tender-spirited and beautiful book, entitled, '' My 
Prisons, by Silvio Pellico," abounds with incidents to prove 
the omnipotence of kindness. He was a gentle and a noble 
soul, imprisoned merely for reasons of State, being suspected of 
republican notions. Robbers and banditti, confined in the 
same building, saluted him with respect as they passed him in 
the court ; and he always returned their salutations with 
brotherly cordiality. He says, " One of them once said to 
me, ' Your irreetiiig, signore, does me good. Perhajjs you see 
something in my face that is not very bad 1 An unhappy passion 
led me to commit a crime ; but oh, signore, I am not, indeed 
I am not a villain.' And he burst into tears. I held out my 
hand to him, but he could not take it. My guards, not from 
bad feeling, but in obedience to orders, repulsed him." 

In the sight of God, perchance their repulse was a heavier 
crime than that for which the poor fellow was imprisoned ; 
l)erliaps it made him a villain, when the genial influence of 
Silvio Pellico might have restored him a blessing to the human 
family. If these things are so, for what a frightful amount of 
crime are the coercing and repelling influences of society 
responsible ! 

I have not been happy since that visit to Blackwell's Island. 
There is something j^ainful, yea, terrific, in feeling myself 
involved in the great wheel of society, which goes whirling on, 
crushing thousands at every turn. This relation of the 
individual to the mass is the sternest and most frightful of all 
the conflicts between necessity and free will. Yet here, too, 
conflict should be harmony, and will be so. Put far away 
from thy soul all desire of retaliation, all angry thoughts, all 
disposition to overcome or humiliate an adversary, and be 
assured thou hast done much to abolish gallows, chains, and 
l)risons, though thou hast never written or spoken a word on 
the criminal code. 

God and good angels alone know the vast, the incalculable 
influence that goes out into the universe of spirit, and thence 
flows into the universe of matter, from the conquered evil, 
and the voiceless prayer, of one solitary soul. Wouldst thou 



156 



LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 



bring the world unto God ? Then live near to him thyself. 
If divine life pervade thine own soul, every thing that touches 
thee will receive the electric spark, though thou mayst be un- 
conscious of being charged therewith. This surely would be 
the highest, to strive to keej) near the holy, not for the sake 
of our own reward here or hereafter, but that through love to 
God we might bless our neighbour. The human soul can 
perceive this, and yet the beauty of the earth is everywhere 
defaced with jails and gibbets ! Angelic natures can never 
deride, else were there loud lauo^hter in heaven at the discord 
between man's perceptions and his practice. 

At Long Island Farms I found six hundred children, sup- 
ported by the public. It gives them wholesome food, com- 
fortable clothing, and the common rudiments of education. 
For this it deserves praise. But the aliment which the spirit 
craves, the public has not to give. The young heart asks for 
love — yearns for love — but its own echo only returns to it 
through empty halls, instead of answer. 

The institution is much lauded by visitors, and not without 
reason ; for every thing looks clean and comfortable, and the 
children appear happy. The drawbacks are such as inevitably 
belong to their situation, as children of the public. The op- 
pressive feeling is, that there are no mothers there. Every 
thing moves by machinery, as it always must with masses of 
children, never subdivided into families. In one place I saw a 
stack of small wooden guns, and was informed that the boys 
were daily drilled to military exercises, as a useful means of 
forming habits of order, as well as fitting them for the future 
service of the State. Their infant school evolutions partook of 
of the same drill character ; and as for their religion, I was in- 
formed that it was " beautiful to see them pray ; for at the first 
tip of the whistle, they all dropped on their knees." Alas, 
poor childhood, thus doth " Church and State" provide for thee ! 
The State arms thee with wooden guns, to play the future mur- 
derer, and the Church teaches thee to pray in platoons, "at the 
first tip of the wdiistle." Luckily they cannot drive the angels 
from thee, or most assuredly they world do it, pro bono p)uhlico. 

The sleeping-rooms were clean as a Shaker's apron. When 
I saw the long rows of nice little beds, ranged side by side, I 
inquired whether there was not a merry buzz in the morning. 
" They are not permitted to speak at all in the sleeping 
apartments," replied the superintendent. The answer sent 



LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 157 

a cold chill througli my heart. I acknowledged that in such 
large establishments the most exact method was necessary, and 
I knew that the children had abundant opportunity for fun and 
frolic in the sunshine and the open fields, in tlie after part of 
the day ; but it is so natural for all young things to crow and 
sing when they open their eyes to the morning light, that I could 
not bear to have the cheerful instinct perpetually repressed. 

The hospital for these children is on the neighbouring island 
of Blackwell. ^^his establishment, though clean and well sup- 
plied with out'/ard comforts, was the most painful sight I ever 
witnessed. About one hundred and fifty children were there, 
mostly orphans, inheriting • every variety of disease from vi- 
cious and sickly parents. In beds all of a row, or rolling by 
dozens over clean matting on the floor, the poor little pale, 
shrivelled, and blinded creatures were waiting for death to 
come and release them. Here the absence of a mother's love 
was most agonising ; not even the patience and gentleness of a 
saint could supply its place ; and saints are rarely hired by the 
public. There was a sort of resignation expressed in the 
countenances of some of the little ones, which would have been 
beautiful in maturer years, but in childhood it spoke mourn- 
fully of a withered soul. It was pleasant to think that a large 
proportion of them would soon be received by the angels, who 
will doubtless let them sin;^ in the morninir. 

That the law of love may cheer and bless even public estab- 
lishments, has been proved by the example of the Society of 
Friends. They formerly had an establishment for their own 
poor in Philadelphia, on a plan so simple and so beautiful, 
that one cannot but mourn to think it has given place to more 
common and less brotherly modes of relief ; — a nest of small 
households, enclosed on three sides, an open space devoted to 
gardens, in which each had a share. Here each poor family 
lived in separate rooms, and were assisted by the Society, ac- 
cording to its needs. Sometimes a widow could support her- 
self, with the exception of rent ; and in that case, merely rooms 
were furnished gratis. An aged couple could perhaps subsist 
very comfortably, if supplied with house and fuel ; and the 
friendly assistance was according to their wants. Some needed 
entire support; and to such it was ungrudgingly given. These 
paupers were oftentimes ministers and elders, took the highest 
seats in the meeting-house, and had as much influence as any in 
the afiiiirs of the Society. Everything consj^ired to make them 



158 LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 

retain nndiminished self-respect. The manner in which they 
evinced this would be considered impudence in the tenants of 
our modern alms-houses. One old lady being supplied with a 
load of wood at her free lodgings, refused to take it, saying, 
that it did not suit her ; she wanted dry, small wood. " But," 
remonstrated the man, " I was ordered to bring it here." " I 
can't help that. Tell 'em the best wood is the best economy. 
I do not want such wood as that." Her orders were obeyed, 
and the old lady's wishes were gratified. Another, who took 
great pride and pleasure in the neatness of her little garden, 
employed a carpenter to make a trellis for her vines. Some 
objection was made to paying this bill, it being considered a 
mere superfluity. But the old lady maintained that it was ne- 
cessary for her comfort ; and at meetings and all public places, 
she never failed to rebuke the elders. " O ! you profess to do 
unto others as you would be done by, and you have never paid 
that carpenter his bill." Worn out by her perseverance, they 
paid the bill, and she kept her trellis of vines. It probably 
was more necessary to her comfort than many things they would 
have considered as not superfluous. 

The poor of this establishment did not feel like dependents, 
and were never regarded as a burden, They considered them- 
selves as members of a family, receiving from brethren the as- 
sistance they would have gladly bestowed under a reverse of 
circumstances. This approaches the gospel standard. Since 
the dawn of Christianity, no class of people have furnished an 
example so replete with a most wise tenderness, as the Society 
of Friends in the days of its purity. Thank God, nothing good 
or true ever dies. The lifeless form falls from it, and it lives 
elsewhere. 



LETTER XXX. 

CROTON WATER THE FOUNTAIXS — FEAR OF PUBLIC OPINIOX 

SOCIAL FREEDOM — ANECDOTE OF THE LITTLE BOY THAT RAN 
AWAY FROM PROVIDENCE. 

November 13, 1842. 

Oh, who that has not been shut up in the great prison-cell 
of a city, and made to drink of its brackish springs, can es- 
timate the blessings of the Croton Aqueduct 1 — clean, sweet, 



LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 159 

abundant water ! AYell might they bring it thirty miles under- 
ground, and usher it into the city with roaring cannon, sonorous 
bells, waving flags, floral canopies, and a loud chorus of song ! 

I shall never forget my sensations when I first looked upon 
the Fountains. My soul jumped, and clapped its hands, 
rejoicing in the exceeding beauty. I am an novice, and very 
easily made wild by the play of graceful forms; but those 
accustomed to the splendid displays of France and Italy, say 
the world offers nothing to equal the magnificence of the New 
York jets. There is such a head of water, that it throws 
the column sixty feet into the air, and drops it into the basin 
in a shower of diamonds. The one in the Park, opposite the 
Astor House, consists of a large central pijDe, with eighteen 
subordinate jets in a basin a hundred feet broad. By shifting 
the jDlate on the conduit pipe, these fountains can be made to 
assume various shapes. The Maid of the Mist, the Croton 
Plume, the Yase, the Dome, the Bouquet, the Sheaf of Wheat, 
and the AYeeping-willow. As the sun shone on the sparkling 
drops, through mist and feathery foam, rainbows glimmered at 
the sides, as if they came to celebrate a marriage between 
Spirits of Light and Water Nymphs. 

The fountain in Union Park is smaller, but scarcely less 
beautiful. It is a weeping willow of crystal droi)S ; but one 
can see that it weeps for joy. Now it leaps and sports as 
gracefully as Undine in her wildest moods, and then sinks into 
the vase under a veil of woven pearl, like the undulating fare- 
well courtesy of her fluid relations. On the evening of the 
great Croton celebration, they illuminated this fountain with 
coloured fireworks, kindling the cloud of mist with many- 
coloured gems ; as if the Water S]:>irits had had another wedding 
with fairies of the diamond mines. 

I Avent out to Harlaem, the other day, to see the great jet 
of water, which there rises a hundred feet in the air, and falls 
through a belt of rainbows. Water will rise to its level, as 
surely as the morality of a nation, or a sect, rises to its idea of 
God. They to whom God is the Almighty, rather than the 
Heavenly Father, do not understand that the highest ideal of 
justice is perfect and universal love. They cannot perceive 
this ; for both spiritually and naturally water never rises above 
the level of its source. But how sublimely it rushes upward 
to find its level ! As I gazed in loving wonder on that beautiful 
column, it seemed to me a fitting type of those pure, free 



160 LETTERS FROil NEW YORK. 

spirits, who, at the smallest opening, spring upward to the 
highest, revealing to all mankind the true level of the religious 
idea of their age. But, alas, here is the stern old conflict 
between necessity and freewill. The column, by the law of its 
being, would rise quite to the level of its source ; but, as the 
impulse, that sent it forth in such glorious majesty, expends 
itself, the lateral pressure overpowers the leaping waters, and 
sends them downwards in tears. 

If we had a tube hioii enouo^h to defend the strufjoflinii' water 
from surrounding pressure, it would rise to its level. Will 
society ever be so constructed as to enable us to do this 
spiritually'? It must be so before "Holiness to the Lord" is 
written on the bells of the horses. 

I told my beloved friends, as we stood gazing on that 
magnificent jet of water, that its grandeur and its gracefulness 
revealed much, and promised more. They smiled, and reminded 
me that it was a canon of criticism, laid down by Blair, never 
to liken the natural to the spiritual. I have no dispute with 
those who let down an iron-barred portcullis between matter 
and spirit. The winged soul flies over, and sees the whole as 
one fair region, golden with the same sunlight, fresh with the 
same breezes from heaven. 

But I must not ofler sybilline leaves in the market. Who 
will buy them 1 The question shows that my spirit likewise 
feels the lateral pressure. Would I could turn downward as 
gracefully as the waters ! uniting the upward tendency in an 
arch so beautiful, and every drop sparkling as it falls into the 
common reservoir, whence future fountains shall gush in 
perpetual beauty. 

I am again violating Blair's injunction. His iron gate rolls 
away like a stage curtain, and- lo, the whole region of spiritual 
progress opens in glorious persj^ective ! How shall I get back 
to the actual, and stay there 1 If the doctrine of transmigration 
of souls were true, I should assuredly pass into a bird of 
Paradise, which for ever floats in the air, or if it touches the 
earth for a moment, is impatient to soar again. 

Strange material this for a reformer ! And I tell you 
plainly that reforming work lies around me like " the ring of 
necessity," and ever and anon freewill bites at the circle. 
But this necessity is only another name for conscience ; and 
that is the voice of God. I would not unchain freewill, if I 
could ; for if I did, the planets would fly out of their places ; 



LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 161 

for they, too, in their far off splendour, are linked together 
with truth and duty. 

But there is a false necessity with which we industriously 
surround ourselves ; a circle that never expands ; whose iron 
never changes to ductile gold. This is the pressure of public 
opinion ; the intolerable restraint of conventional forms. 
Under this despotic influence, men and women check their best 
impulses, su])press their noblest feelings, conceal their highest 
thoughts. Each longs for full communion with other souls, 
but dares not give utterance to its yearnings. What hinders 1 
The fear of what Mrs. Smith, or Mrs. Clark, will say ; or the 
frown of some sect ; or the anathema of some synod ; or the 
fashion of some clique ; or the laugh of some club ; or the 
misrepresentation of some political party. Oh, thou foolish 
soul ! Thou art afraid of thy neighbour, and knowest not that 
he is equally afraid of thee. He has bound thy hands, and 
thou has fettered his feet. It were wise for both to snap the 
imaginary bonds, and walk upright unshackled. If thy heart 
yearns for love, be loving ; if thou wouldst free mankind, be 
free ; if thou wouldst have a brother frank to thee, be frank to 
him. 

"Be noble ! and the nobleness that lies 
In other men, sleeping but never dead, 
Will rise in majesty to meet thine own." 

" But what will people say?" 

Why does it concern thee what they say? Thy life is not in 
their hands. They can give thee nothing of real value, nor 
take from thee anything that is worth the having. Satan may 
promise thee all the kingdoms of the earth, but he has not an 
acre of it to give. He may offer much, as the price of his 
worship, but there is a flaw in all his title deeds. Eternal and 
sure is the promise, " Blessed are the meek, for they shall 
inherit the earth." Only have faith in this, and thou wilt live 
high above the rewards and punishments of that spectral giant, 
which men call Society. 

" But I shall be misunderstood — misrepresented." 

And what if thou art 1 They wdio throw stones at what is 
above them, receive the missiles back again by the law of 
gravity ; and lucky are they if they bruise not their own faces. 

Would that I could persuade all who read this to be truthful 
and free; to say what they think, and act what they feel; to 
cast from them, like ropes of sand, all fear of sects, and parties, 

ii 



162 LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 

and clans, and classes. Most earnestly do I pray to be bound 
only by my own conscience, in that circle of duties, which widens 
ever, till it enfolds all being, and touches the throne of God. 

What is there of joyful freedom in our social intercourse 1 
We meet to see each other ; and not a peep do we get under 
the thick, stifling veil which each carries about him. We visit 
to enjoy ourselves ; and our host takes away all our freedom, 
while we destroy his own. If the host wishes to work or ride, 
he dare not, lest it seem unpolite to the guest ; if the guest 
wishes to read or sleep, he dare not, lest it seem unpolite to 
the host ; so they both remain slaves, and feel it a relief to 
part company. A few individuals, mostly in foreign lands, 
arrange this matter with wiser freedom. If a visitor arrives, 
they say, " I am busy to-day ; but if you wish to ride, there 
are horse and saddle in the stable ; if you wish to read, there 
are books in the library; if you are inclined to music, flute and 
and piano are in the parlour ; if you want to work, the men 
are raking hay in the fields ; if you want to romp, the children 
are at play in the court ; if you want to talk with me, I can 
be with you at such an hour. Go when you please, and while 
you stay do as you please." 

At some houses in Florence, large parties meet, without 
invitation, and with the slightest preparation. It is understood 
that on some particular evening of the week, a lady or gentle- 
man always receive their friends. In one room are books, and 
busts and flowers ; in another, pictures, and engravings ; in a 
third, music ; couples are ensconced in some sheltered alcove, 
or groups dotted about the rooms in mirthful or serious 
conversation. No one is required to speak to his host, either 
entering or departing. Lemonade and baskets of fruit stand 
here and there on the side-tables, that all may take who like ; 
but eating, which constitutes so large a part of all American 
entertainments, is a slight and almost unnoticed incident in 
these festivals of intellect and taste. Wouldst thou like to see 
such social freedom introduced here ? Then do it. But the 
first step must be complete indifference to Mrs. Smith's 
assertion, that you were mean enough to offer only one kind of 
cake to your company, and to put less shortening in the under- 
crust of your pies than the upper. Let Mrs. Smith talk 
according to her gifts ; be thou assured that all living souls 
love freedom better than cake or under-crust. 

Of perfect social freedom I never knew but one instance. 



LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 163 

Doctor H of Boston, coming home to dine one clay, found 

a very bright-looking and handsome mulatto on the steps, 
apparently about seven or eight years old. As he opened the 
door, the boy glided in, as if it were his home. " What do 
you want?" said the doctor. The child looked up with smiling 
confidence, and answered, " I am a little boy that run away 
from Providence ; and I want some dinner ; and I thought 
maybe you would give me some." His radiant face, and child- 
like freedom operated like a charm. He had a good dinner, 
and remained several days, becoming more and more the pet of 
the whole household. He said he had been cruelly treated by 
somebody in Providence, and had run away ; but the people 
he described could not be found. The doctor thought it would 
not do to have him growing up in idleness, and he tried to find 
a place where he could run of errands, clean knives, etc., for his 
living. An hour after this was mentioned, the boy was 
missing. In a few weeks, they heard of him in the opposite 
part of the city, sitting on a door-step at dinner-time. When 
the door opened, he walked in, smiling, and said, '• I am a 
little boy that run away from Providence ; and I want some 
dinner, and I thought may be you would give me some." He 
was not mistaken this time either. The heart that trusted so 
completely received a cordial welcome. After a time, it was 
again proposed to find some place at service; and straightway 
this human butterfly was ofi*, no one knew whither. 

For several months no more was heard of him. But one 
bright winter day, his first benefactor found him seated on the 
steps of a house in Beacon Street. '' Why Tom, where did you 
come from'?" said he. "I came from Philadelphia." "How 
upon earth did you get there?" "I heard folks talk about 
Kew York, and I thought I should like to see it. So I went 
on board a steam-boat ; and when it put off, the captain asked 
me who I was ; and I told him that I was a little boy that 
run away from Providence, and I wanted to go to New York, 
but I hadn't any money. ' You little rascal,' says he, ' I'll 
throw you overboard.' ' I don't believe you will,' said I ; and 
he didn't. I told him I was hungry, and he gave me something 
to eat, and made up a nice little bed for me. When I got to 
New York, I went and sat down on a door-step ; and when 
the gentleman came home to dinner, I went in, and told him 
that I was a little boy that run away from Providence, and I 
was hungry. So they gave me something to eat, and made up 



164 LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 

a nice little bed for me, and let me stay there. But I wanted 
to see Philadelphia ; so I went into a steam-boat ; and when 
they asked me who I was, I told them that I was a little boy 
that run away from Providence. They said I had no business 
there, but they gave me an orange. When I got to Philadelphia, 
I sat down on a door-step, and when the gentleman came home 
to dinner, I told him I was a little boy that run away from 
Providence, and I thought perhaps he would give me something 
to eat. So they gave me a good dinner, and made me up a 
nice little bed. Then I wanted to come back to Boston ; and 
every body gave me something to eat, and made me up a nice 
little bed. And I sat down on this door-step, and when the 
lady asked me what I wanted, I told her I was a little boy 
that run away from Providence, and I was hungry. So 
she gave me something to eat, and made me up a nice 
little bed ; and I stay here, and do her errands sometimes. 
Every body is very good to me, and I like every body," 

He looked u]) with the most sunny gaiety, and striking 
his hoop as he sj^oke, went down the street like an arrow. He 
disappeared soon after, probably in quest of new adventures. 
I have never heard of him since ; and sometimes a painful fear 
passes through my mind, that the kidnappers, prowling about 
all our large towns, have carried him into slavery. 

The story had a charm for me, for two reasons. I was de- 
lighted with the artless freedom of the winning, wayv^ard child ; 
and still more did I rejoice in the perpetual kindness, which 
everywhere gave it such friendly greeting. Oh ! if we would 
but dare to throw ourselves on each other's hearts, how the 
image of heaven would be reflected all over the face of this 
earth, as the clear blue sky lies mirrored in the waters. 



LETTER XXXI. 

CAPITAL PUNISHMENT CONVERSATION WITH WILLIAM LADD — 

TWO ANECDOTES, SHOWING THE DANGER OF TRUSTING TO 
CIRCUMSTANTIAL EVIDENCE. 

November 19, 1842. 

To-DAY, I cannot write of beauty ; for I am sad and troubled. 
Heart, head, and conscience, are all in battle-array against the 
savage customs of my time. By and by, the law of love, like 



LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 165 

oil upon the waters, will calm my surging sympathies, and 
make the current flow more calmly, though none the less deej) 
or strong. But to-day, do not ask me to love governor, sheriff 
or constable, or any man who defends capital punishment. I 
ought to do it; for genuine love enfolds even murderers with its 
blessings. By to-morrow, I think I can remember them with- 
out bitterness ; but to-day, I cannot love them ; no, I cannot. 

We were to have had an execution yesterday; but the 
wretched prisoner avoided it by suicide. The gallows had been 
erected for several hours, and with a cool refinement of 
cruelty, was hoisted before the window of the condemned; 
the hangman was all ready to cut the cord; marshals paced back 
and forth, smoking and whistling; spectators were waiting im- 
patiently to see whether he would "die game." Printed 
circulars had been handed abroad to summon the number of 
witnesses required by law: "You are respectfully invited to 
witness the execution of John C. Colt." I trust some of them 
are preserved for museums. Specimens should be kept, as 
relics of a barbarous age, for succeeding generations to wonder 
at. They miglit be hung up in a frame ; and the portrait of a 
New Zealand chief, picking the bones of an enemy of his tribe, 
would be an appropriate pendant. 

This bloody insult was thrust into the hands of some citizens, 
who carried hearts under their vests, and they threw it in 
tattered fragments to the dogs, as more fittmg witnesses than 
human beings. It was cheering to those who have faith in 
human progress, to see how many viewed the subject in this 
light. But as a general thing, the very spirit of murder was 
rife among the dense crowd, which thronged the place of 
execution. They were swelling with revenge, and eager for 
blood. One man came all the way from 'New Hampshire, on 
purpose ; thereby showing himself a likely subject for the 
gallows, whoever he may be. "Women deemed themselves not 
treated with becoming gallantry, because tickets of admittance 
were denied them; and I think it showed injudicious par- 
tiality ; for many of them can be taught murder by as short a 
lesson as any man, and sustain it by arguments from scripture, 
as ably as any theologian. However, they were not admitted 
to this edifying exhibition in the great school of public morals ; 
and had only the slim comfort of standing outside, in a keen 
November wind, to catch the first toll of the bell, which would 
announce that a human brother had been sent struggling into 



166 LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 

eternity by the hand of violence. But while the multitude 
stood with open watches, and strained ears to catch the sound, 
and the marshals smoked and whistled, and the hangman 
walked up and down, waiting for his prey, lo ! word was 
brought that the criminal was found dead in his bed ! He 
had asked one half hour alone to prepare his mind for 
departure ; and at the end of that brief interval, he was found 
with a dagger thrust into his heart. The tidings were received 
with fierce mutterings of disappointed rage. The throng 
beyond the walls were furious to see him wdth their own eyes, 
to be sure that he was dead. But when the welcome news met 
my ear, a tremendous load was taken from my heart. I had 
no chance to anaylse right and wrong ; for over all thought 
and feeling flowed impulsive joy, that this " Christian " com- 
munity were cheated of a hanging. They who had assembled 
to commit legalised murder, in cold blood, with strange con- 
fusion of ideas, were unmindful of their own guilt, while they 
talked of his suicide as a crime equal to that for which he was 
condemned. I am willing to leave it between him and his 
God. For myself, I would rather have the burden of it on my 
own soul, than take the guilt of those who would have executed 
a fellow-creature. He was driven to a fearful extremity of 
agony and desperation. He was precisely in the situation of 
a man on board a burning ship, who being compelled to face 
death, jumps into the waves, as the least painful mode of the 
two. But they, who thus drove him " to walk the plank," 
made cool, deliberate preparations to take life, and with 
inventive cruelty sought to add every bitter drop that could be 
added to the dreadful cup of vengeance. 

To me, human life seems so sacred a thing, that its violent 
termination always fills me with horror, whether perpetrated 
by an individual or a crowd ; whether done contrary to, or 
according to law and custom. Why John C. Colt should be 
condemned to an ignominious death for an act of resentment 
altogether unpremeditated, while men, who deliberately, and 
with malice aforethought, go out to murder another for some 
insulting word, are judges, and senators in the land, and 
favourite candidates for the President's chair, is more than I 
can comprehend. There is, to say the least, a strange incon- 
sistency in our customs. 

At the same moment that I was informed of the death of the 
prisoner, I heard that the prison was on fire. It was soon 



LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 167 

extingiiislied, but the remarkable coincidence added not a little 
to the convulsive excitement of the hour. I went with a 
friend to look at the beautiful spectacle ; for it was exceedingly 
beautiful. The fire had kindled at the very top of the cupola, 
the wind was high, and the flames rushed upward, as if the 
angry spirits below had escaj^ed on fiery wings. Heaven for- 
give the feelings that, for a moment, mingled with my admira- 
tion of that beautiful conflagration ! Society had kindled all 
around me a bad excitement, and one of the infernal sparks 
fell into my own heart. If this was the effect produced on me, 
who am by nature tender-hearted, by principle opposed to all 
retaliation, and by social jDOsition secluded from contact with 
evil, what must it have been on the minds of rowdies and 
desperadoes 1 The effect of executions on all brought within 
their influence, is evil, and nothing but evil. For a fortnight 
past, this whole city has been kept in a state of corroding 
excitement, either of hope or fear. The stern pride of the 
prisoner left little, in his peculiar case, to appeal to the 
sympathies of society ; yet the instincts of our common nature 
rose up against the sanguinary spirit manifested towards him. 
The public were, moreover, divided in opinion with regard to 
his crime ; and in the keen discussion of legal distinctions, 
moral distinctions became woefully confused. Each day, hope 
and fear alternated ; the natural effect of all this, was to have 
the whole thing regarded as a game, in which the criminal 
might, or might not, become the winner ; and every experiment 
of this kind shakes public respect for the laws, from centre to 
circumference. Worse than all this, was the horrible amount 
of diabolical passion excited. The hearts of men were filled 
with murder; they gloated over the thoughts of vengeance, and 
were rabid to witness a fellow creature's agony. They com- 
plained loudly that he was not to be hung high enough for the 
crowd to see him. " What a pity ! " exclaimed a woman, who 
stood near me, gazing at the burning tower ; " they will have 
to give him two hours more to live." *' Would you feel so, if 
he were your son]" said I. Her countenance changed 
instantly. She had not before realised that every criminal was 
somebody's son. 

As we walked homeward, we encountered a deputy sheriff"; 
not the most promising material, certainly, for lessons on 
humanity ; but to him we spoke of the crowd of savage faces, 
and the tones of hatred, as obvious proofs of the bad influence 



168 LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 

of capital punishment. "I know that," said he; " but I don't 
see how we could dispense with it. Now, supposing that we 
had fifty murderers shut up in prison for life, instead of hang- 
ing 'em ; and suppose there should come a revolution; what an 
awful thing it would be to have fifty murderers to be let loose 
upon the community ! " " There is another side to that 
projoosition," we answered ; " for every criminal you execute, 
you make a hundred murderers outside the prison, each as 
dangerous as would be the one inside." He said perhaps it 
was so ; and went his way. 

As for the punishment and the terror of such doings, they 
fall most keenly on the best hearts in the community. Thous- 
ands of men, as well as women, had broken and startled sleep 
for several nights preceding that dreadful day. Executions 
always excite a universal shudder among the innocent, the 
humane, and the wise-hearted. It is the voice of God, crying 
aloud within us against the wickedness of this savage custom. 
Else why is it that the instinct is so universal 1 

The last conversation I had with the late William Ladd 
made a strong impression on my mind. While he was a sea- 
captain, he occasionally visited Spain, and once witnessed an 
execution there. He said that no man, however low and 
despicable, would consent to perform the ofiice of hangman ; 
and whoever should dare to suggest such a thing to a decent 
man, would be likely to have his brains blown out. This feel- 
ing was so strong, so universal, that the only way they could 
procure an executioner, was to ofier a condemned criminal his 
own life, if he would consent to perform the vile and hateful 
office on another. Sometimes executions were postponed for 
months, because there was no condemned criminal to perform 
the office. A fee was allotted by law to the wretch who did 
perform it, but no one would run the risk of touching his 
polluted hand by giving it to him ; therefore, the priest threw 
the purse as far as possible ; the odious being ran to pick it 
up, and hastened to escape from the shuddering execrations 
of all who had known him as a hangman. Even the poor 
animal that carried the criminal and his coffin in a cart to 
the foot of the gallows, was an object of universal loathing. 
He was cropped and marked, that he might be known as 
the " Hangman's Donkey." No man, however great his needs, 
would use this beast either for pleasure or labour ; and the 
peasants are so averse to having him pollute their fields with 



LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 169 

Jhis footsteps, that when he was seen approaching, the hoys drove 
him off with hisses, sticks, and stones. Thus does the human 
heart cry out against this wicked practice ! 

A tacit acknowledgment of the demoralising influence of exe- 
cutions is generally made, in the fact that they are forbidden to 
be public, as formerly. The scene is now in a prison-yard, in- 
stead of open fields, and no spectators are admitted but officers 
of the law, and those especially invited. Yet a favourite argu- 
ment in favour of capital punishment has been the terror that 
the spectacle inspires in the breast of evil doers. I trust those 
who were singled out from the mass of New York population, 
by particular invitation, especially the judges and civil officers, 
will feel the full weight of the compliment. During the French 
Revolution, public executions seemed too slow, and Foviquier 
proposed to put the guillotine under cover, where batches of a 
hundred might be despatched with few spectators. " Wilt thoa 
-demoralise the guillotine'?" asked Callot, reproachfully. 

Thut bloody guillotine was an instrument of law, as well as 
our gallows ; and what wickedness has not been established by 
law ? Nations, clans, and classes, engaged in fierce struggles of 
selfishness and hatred, made laws to strengthen each other's 
power, and revenge each other's aggressions. By slow degrees, 
always timidly and reluctantly, society emerged out of the bar- 
barisms with which it thus became entangled. It is but a 
short time ago that men were hung in this country for stealing. 
The last human brother who suffered under this law, in Massa- 
chusetts, was so wretchedly poor that when he hung on the gal- 
lows his rags fluttered in the wind. What think you was the 
comparative guilt, in the eye of God, between him and those who 
hung him? Yet, it was according to law ; and men cried out 
then as they now do, that it was not safe to have the law al- 
tered. Judge M'Kean, governor of Pennsylvania, was strongly 
opposed to the abolition of death for stealing, and the disuse of 
the pillory and whipping-post. He was a very humane man, 
but had the common fear of changing old customs. " It will 
not do to abolish these salutary restraints, it will break up the 
foundations of society." Those relics of barbarism were banished 
long ago ; but the foundations of society are in nowise injured 
thereby. 

The testimony from all parts of the world is invariable and 
conclusive, that crime diminishes in proportion to the mildness 
of the laws. The real danijer is in havinsf laws on the statute- 



170 LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 

book at variance with the universal instincts of the human, 
heart, and thus tempting men to continual evasion. The eva- 
sion even of a bad law is attended with many mischievous 
results ; its abolition is always safe. 

In looking at capital punishment in its practical bearings an 
observing mind is at once struck with the extreme uncertainty 
attending it. The balance swings hither and thither and settles, 
as it were, by chance. The strong instincts of the heart teach 
juries extreme reluctance to convict for capital offences. They 
will avail themselves of every loophole in the evidence, to avoid 
the bloodj^ responsibility imposed upon them. In this way, un- 
doubted criminals escape all punishment, until society becomes 
alarmed for its own safety, and insists that the next victim shall 
be sacrificed. It was the misfortune of John C. Colt to be ar- 
rested at the time when the popular wave of indignation had 
been swelling higher and higher, in consequence of the impunity 
with which Robinson, White, and Jewell, had escaped. The 
wrath and jealousy which they had excited was visited upon him, 
and his chance for a merciful verdict was greatly diminished. 
The scale now turns the other way ; and the next ofiender will 
probably receive very lenient treatment, though he should not 
have half so many extenuating circumstances in his favour. 

Another thought which forces itself upon the mind in con- 
sideration of this subject is the danger of convicting the inno- 
cent. Murder is a crime which must of course be committed 
in secret, and therefore the proof must be mainly circumstantial. 
In Scotland it led to so many terrible mistakes, that they long 
ago refused to convict any man of a capital offence, upon circum- 
stantial evidence. 

A few years ago a poor German came to New York, and took 
lodgings, where he was allowed to do his cooking in the same 
room with the family. The husband and wife lived in a perpetual 
quarrel. One day, the German came into the kitchen with a 
clasp knife and a pan of potatoes, and began to pare them for 
his dinner. The quarrelsome couple were in a more violent 
altercation than usual ; but he sat with his back towards them, 
and being ignorant of their language, felt in no danger of being 
involved in their disputes. But the woman, with a sudden and 
unexpected movement, snatched the knife from his hand, and 
plunged it in her husband's heart. She had suflSicient presence 
of mind to rush into the street, and scream Murder ! The poor 
foreigner, in the meanwhile, seeing the wounded man reel, sprang 



LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 171 

forward to catch him in his arms, and drew out the knife. Peo- 
ple from the street crowded in, and found liim with the dying 
man in his arms, the knife in his hand, and blood upon his 
clothes. The wicked woman swore, in the most positive terms, 
that he had been fighting with her husband, and had stabbed 
him with a knife he always carried. The unfortunate German 
knew too little English to understand her accusation, or to tell 
his own story. He was dragged off to prison, and the true 
state of the case was made known through an interpreter ; but 
it was not believed. Circumstantial evidence was exceedingly 
strono- asfainst the accused, and the real criminal swore unhesi- 
tatingly that she saw him commit the murder. He was executed, 
notwithstanding the most persevering efforts of his lawyer, 
John Anthon, Esq., whose convictions of the man's innocence 
were so painfully strong, that from that day to this, he has re- 
fused to have any connexion with a capital case. Some years 
after this tragic event, the woman died, and, on her death-bed, 
confessed her agency in the diabolical transaction ; but her poor 
victim could receive no benefit from this tardy repentance ; so- 
ciety had wantonly thrown away its power to atone for the 
grievous wrong. 

Many of our readers will doubtless recollect the tragical fate 
of Burton, in Missouri, on which a novel was founded, which 
still circulates in the libraries. A young lady, belonging to a 
genteel and very proud family, in Missouri, was beloved by a 
young man named Burton ; but unfortunately her afiections 
were fixed on another less worthy. He left her with a tarnished 
reputation. She was by nature energetic and high-spirited, her 
family were proud, and she lived in the midst of a society which 
considered revenge a virtue, and named it honour. Misled by 
this false popular sentiment, and her own excited feelings, she 
resolved to repay her lover's treachery with death. But she 
kept her secret so well that no one suspected her purpose, 
though she purchased pistols, and practised with them daily. 
Mr. Burton gave evidence of his strong attachment by renew- 
ing his attentions when the world looked most coldly upon her. 
His generous kindness won her bleeding heart, but the softening 
influence of love did not lead her to forego the dreadful purpose 
she had formed. She watched for a favourable opportunity, and 
shot her betrayer, when no one was near to witness the horrible 
deed. Some little incident excited the suspicion of Burton, and 
he induced her to confess to him the whole transaction. It was 



172 LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 

obvious enough that suspicion would naturally fasten upon him, 
the well known lover of her who had been so deeply injured. 
He was arrested, but succeeded in persuading her that he was 
in no danger. Circumstantial evidence was fearfully against 
him, and he soon saw that his chance was doubtful ; but with 
affectionate magnanimity, he concealed this from her. He was 
convicted and condemned. A short time before the execution, 
he endeavoured to cut his throat ; but his life was saved, for the 
cruel purpose of taking it away according to the cold-blooded 
barbarism of the law. Pale and wounded, he was hoisted to the 
gallows before the gaze of a Christian community. 

The guilty cause of all this was almost frantic, when she 
found that he had thus sacrificed himself to save her. She im- 
mediately j)ublished the whole history of her wrongs, and her 
revenge. Her keen sense of wounded honour was in accordance 
with public sentiment, her wrongs excited indignation and com- 
passion, and the knowledge that an innocent and magnanimous 
man had been so brutally treated, excited a general revulsion 
of popular feeling. No one wished for another victim, and she 
was left unpunished, save by the dreadful records of her memory. 

Few know how numerous are the cases where it has sub- 
sequently been discovered that the innocent suffered instead of 
the guilty. Yet one such case is enough to lead to the abolition 
of capital punishment. 

But many say, ''The Old Testament requires blood for blood." 
So it requires that a woman should be put to death for adultery ; 
and men for doing work on the Sabbath ; and children for curs- 
ing their parents ; and " If an ox were to push with his horn, in 
time past, and it hath been testified to his owner, and he hath not 
kept him in, but that he hath killed a man or a woman, the ox 
shall be stoned, and his owner also shall be put to death." The 
commands given to the Jews, in the old dispensation, do not 
form the basis of any legal code in Christendom. If one com- 
mand is binding on our conscience, all are binding ; for they all 
rest on the same authority. They who feel bound to advocate 
capital punishment for murder, on account of the law given 
to Moses, ought for the same reason, to insist that children 
should be executed for striking or cursing their parents. 

'' It was said by them of old time, an eye for an eye, and a 
tooth for a tooth ; but I say unto vou resist not evil." If our 
"eyes were lifted up," we should see, not Moses and Elias, but 
Jesus only. 



LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 173 

LETTER XXXII. 

MERCY TO CRIMINALS MRS FRY's ANSWER MADE GOOD BY 

BEING BELOVED ; STILL HIGHER TO LOVE OTHERS. 

JSTovember 26, 1842. 

Every year of my life I grow more and more convinced that it 
is wisest and best to fix our attention on the beautiful and 
good, and dwell as little as possible on the evil and the false. 
Society has done my spirit grievous wrong, for the last few 
weeks, with its legal bull-baitings, and its hired murderers. 
They have made me ashamed of belonging to the human 
species ; and were it not that I struggled hard against it, and 
prayed earnestly for a spirit of forgiveness, they would have 
made me hate my race. Yet feeling thus, I did wrong to 
them. Most of them had merely caught the contagion of 
murder, and really were not aware of the nature of the fiend 
they harboured. Probably there was not a single heart in the 
community, that would not have been softened, could it have 
entered into confidential intercourse with the prisoner as Dr. 
Anthon did. All would then have learned that he was a 
human being, with a heart to be melted, and a conscience to 
be roused, like the rest of us ; that under the turbid and 
surging tide of proud, exasperated feelings, ran a warm current 
of human affections, which, with more genial influences^ might 
have flowed on deeper and stronger, mingling its waters with 
the river of life. All this each one would have known, could 
he have looked into the heart of the poor criminal as God 
looketh. But his whole life was judged by a desperate act, 
done in the insanity of passion ; and the motives and the cir- 
cumstances were revealed to the public only through the cold 
barbarisms of the law, therefore he seemed like a wild beast, 
walled out from human sympathies — not as a fellow-creature,, 
with like passions and feelings as themselves. 

Carlyle, in his French Revolution, speaking of one of the 
three bloodiest judges of the Reign of Terror, says: "Marat, 
too, had a brother, and natural affections; and was wrapt once 
in swaddling-clothes, and slept safe in a cradle, like the rest of 
Tis." We are to apt to forget these gentle considerations when 
talking of public criminals. 

If we looked into our souls with a more wise humility, we 



174 LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 

should discover in our own ungoverned anger the germ, of 
murder ; and meekly thank God that we, too, had not been 
brought into temptations too fiery for our strength. It is sad 
to think how the records of a few evil days may blot out from 
the memory of our fellow-men whole years of generous thoughts 
and deeds of kindness ; and this, too, when each one has before 
him the volume of his own broken resolutions, and oft-repeated 
sins. The temptation which most easily besets you, needed, 
perhaps, to be only a little stronger, you needed only to be 
suri-ounded by 'circumstances a little more dangerous and 
exciting, and perhaps you, who now walk abroad in the 
sunshine of respectability, might have come under the ban of 
human laws, as you have into frequent disobedience of the 
divine ; and then that one foul blot would have been regarded 
as the hieroglyphic symbol of your whole life. Between you 
and the inmate of the j)enitentiary, society sees a difference so 
great, that you are scarcely recognised as belonging to the same 
species; but there is One who judgeth not as man judgeth. 

When Mrs. Fry spoke at Newgate, she was Avont to address 
both prisoners and visitors as sinners. When Dr. Channing 
alluded to this practice, she meekly replied, "In the sight of 
God, there is not, perhaps, so much difference as men think." 
In the midst of recklessness, revenge and despair, there is often 
a glimmering evidence that the divine spark is not quite 
extinguished. Who can tell into what a holy flame of benevo- 
lence and self-sacrifice it might have been kindled, had the man 
been surrounded from his cradle by an atmosphere of love 1 

Surely these considerations should make us judge mercifully 
of the sinner, while we hate the sin with tenfold intensity, 
because it is an enemy that lies in wait for us all. The highest 
and holiest example teaches us to forgive all crimes, while we 
palliate none. 

Would that we could learn to be kind — always and 
everywhere kind! Every jealous thought I cherish, every 
angry word I utter, every repulsive tone, is helping to build 
penitentiaries and prisons, and to fill them with those who 
merely carry the same passions and feelings farther than I do. 
It is an awful thought; and the more it is impressed upon me, 
the more earnestly do I pray to live in a state of perpetual 
benediction. 

' ' Love hath a longing and a power to save the gathered world, 

And rescue universal man from the hunting hell-hounds of his doings." 



LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 175 

And so I return, as the old preachers used to say, to my 
first proposition; that we should think gently of all, and claim 
kindred with all, and include all, without exception, in the 
circle of our kindly sympathies. I would not thrust out even 
the hangman, though methinks if I were dying of thirst, I 
would rather wait to receive water from another hand than his. 
Yet what is the hangman but a servant of the law? And 
what is the law but an expression of public opinion? And if 
public opinion be brutal, and thou a component part thereof, 
art thou not the hangman's accomplice? In the name of our 
common Father, sing thy part of the great chorus in the truest 
time, and thus bring this discord into harmony ! 

And if at times, too strong for thee, go out into the great 
temple of Nature, and drink in freshness from her never-failing 
fountain. The devices of men pass away as a vapour; but she 
changes never. Above all fluctuations of opinion, and all the 
tumult of the passions, she smiles ever, in various but 
unchanging beauty. I have gone to her with tears in my 
eyes, with a heart full of the saddest forebodings, for myself 
and all the human race; and lo, she has shown me a babe 
plucking a white clover, with busy, uncertain little fingers, and 
the child walked straight into my heart, and prophesied as 
hopefully as an angel ; and I believed her, and went on my way 
rejoicing. The language of nature, like that of music, is 
universal; it speaks to the heart, and is understood by all. 
Dialects belong to clans and sects; tones to the universe. 
High above all language, floats music on its amber cloud. It 
is not the exponent of opinion, but of feeling. The heart made 
it ; therefore it is infinite. It reveals more than language can ever 
utter, or thoufjhts conceive. And high as music is above mere 
dialects — wincino: its Gfodlike wav, while verbs and nouns no 
creeping — even so, sounds the voice of Love, that clear, treble- 
note of the universe, into the heart of man, and the ear of 
Jehovah. 

In sincere humility do I acknowledge that if I am less 
guilty than some of my human brothers, it is mainly because 
I have been beloved. Kind emotions and impulses have not 
been sent back to me, like dreary echoes, through empty rooms. 
All around me, at this moment, are tokens of a friendly heart- 
warmth. A sheaf of dried grasses brings near the gentle 
image of one who gathered them for love ; a varied group of 
the graceful lady-fern tells me of summer rambles in the woods. 



176 LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 

by one wlio mingled tliouglits of me with all lier glimpses of 
nature's beauty. A rose-bush, from a poor Irish woman^ 
speaks to me of her blessings. A bird of paradise, sent by 
friendship, to warm the wintry hours with thoughts of sunny 
Eastern climes, cheers me with its floating beauty, like a fairy 
fancy. Flower-tokens from the best of neighbours, have come 
all summer long, to bid me a blithe good morning, and tell me 
news of sunshine and fresh air. A piece of sponge, graceful as 
if it grew on the arms of the wave, reminds me of Grecian seas^ 
and of Hylas borne away by water-nymphs. It was given me 
for its uncommon beauty ; and who wi]l not try harder to be 
good, for being deemed a fit recipient of the beautiful 1 A 
root, which promises to bloom into fragrance, is sent by an old 
Quaker lady, whom I know not, but who says, " I would fain 
minister to thy love of flowers." Affection sends childhood to 
peep lovingly at me from engravings, or stand in classic grace,. ^ 
embodied in the little plaster cast. Tlie far-off and the near, 
the past and the future, are with me in my humble apartment. 
True, the mementoes cost little of the world's wealth ; for they 
are of the simplest kind ; but they express the universe — 
because they are thoughts of love, clothed in forms of beauty. 
Why do I mention these things'? From vanity'? Nay,. 
verily ; for it often humbles me to tears, to think how much I 
am loved more than I deserve ; while thousands, far nearer to 
God, pass on their thorny path, comparatively uncheered by 
love and blessing. But it came into my heart to tell you how 
much these things helped me to be good ; how they were like 
roses dropped by unseen hands, guiding me through a wilder- 
ness path unto our Father's mansion. And the love that helps 
me to be good, I would have you bestow upon all, that all may 
become good. To love others is greater happiness than to be 
beloved by them ; to do good is more blessed than to receive. 
The heart of Jesus was so full of love, that he called little 
children to his arms, and folded John upon his bosom; and 
this love made him capable of such divine self-renunciation^ 
that he could offer up even his life for the good of the world. 
The desire to be beloved is ever restless and unsatisfied ; but 
the love that flows out upon others is a perpetual well-spring 
from on high. This source of happiness is within the reach of 
all ; here, if not elsewhere, may the stranger and the friendless 
satisfy the infinite yearnings of the human heart, and find 
therein refreshment and joy. 



LETTERS FROSl NEW YORK. 177 

Believe me, the great panacea for all the disorders in the 
universe, is Love. For thousands of years, the workl has gone 
on perversely, trying to overcome evil with evil ; with the 
worst results, as the condition of things plainly testifies. 
Nearly two thousand years ago, the prophet of the Highest 
proclaimed that evil could be overcome only with good. But 
" when the Son of Man comttli, shall he find faith on earth V 
If we have faith in this holy principle, where is it written on 
our laws or our customs 1 

Write it on thine own life : and men reading it shall say — 
" Lo, something greater than vengeance is here ; a power 
mightier than coercion." And thus the individual faith shall 
become a social faith ; and to the mountains of crime around 
us, it will say, " Be thou removed, and cast into the depths of 
the sea ! " and they will be removed ; and the places that 
knew them shall know them no more. 

This hope is coming towards us, with a halo of sunshine 
round its head ; in the light it casts before, let us do works of 
zeal with the spirit of love. Man may be redeemed from his 
thraldom ! He will be redeemed. For the mouth of the 
Most High hath spoken it. It is inscribed in written 
prophecy, and he utters it to our hearts in perjDctual revelation. 
To you, and me, and each of us. He says, " Gro, bring my people 
out of Egypt, into the promised land." 

To i^erform this mission, we must love both the evil and the 
good, and shower blessings on the just as well as unjust. 
Thanks to our Heavenly Father, I have had much friendly aid 
on my own spiritual ])ilgrimage ; through many a cloud has 
pierced a sunbeam, and over many a pit-fall have I been 
guided by a garland. In gratitude for this, fain would I hel]) 
others to be good, according to the small measure of my 
ability. My spiritual adventures are very like those of the 
"little boy that run away from Pi-ovidence." When troubled 
or discouraged, my soul seats itself on some door-step — there is 
ever some one to welcome me in, and make " a nice little 
bed " for my weary heart. It may be a young friend, who 
gathers for me flowers in Summer, and grasses, ferns, and red 
berries in the Autumn ; or it may be sweet Mary Howitt, 
whose mission it is " to turn the sunny side of things to human 
eyes ; '' or Charles Dickens, who looks with such deep and 
friendly glance into the human heart, whether it beats beneath 
embroidered vest, or tattered jacket; or the serene and gentle 

N 



178 LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 

Fen^lon ; or the devout Thomas a Kempis ; or the meek- 
spirited John Woohnan ; or the eloquent hopefuhiess of 
Channing ; or the cathedral tones of Keble, or the saintly 
beauty of Raphael, or the clear melody of Handel. All speak 
to me with friendly greeting, and have somewhat to give my 
thirsty soul. Fain would I do the same, for all who come to 
my door-step, hungry, and cold, spiritually or naturally. To 
the erring and the guilty, above all others, the door of my 
heart shall never open outward. I have too much need of 
mercy. Are we not all children of the same Father'? and 
shall we not pity those who among pit-falls lose their way 
home 1 



LETTER XXXIII. 

CATHOLIC CHURCH — PUSEYISM — WORSHIP OF IRISH LABOURERS 
— ANECDOTE OF THE IRISH. 

December 8, 1842. 

I WENT, last Sunday, to the Catholic Cathedral, a fine-look- 
ing Gothic edifice, which impressed me with that feeling of 
reverence so easily inspired in my soul by a relic of the past. 
I have heard many say that their first visit to a Catholic church 
filled them with laughter, the services seemed so absurd a 
mockery. It was never thus with me. I know not whether 
it is Nature endowed me so largely with imagination and with 
devotional feelings, or whether it is because I slept for years 
with "Thomas a Kempis's Imitation of Christ" under my 
pillow, and found it my greatest consolation, and best outward 
guide, next to the IsTew Testament ; but so it is, that holy old 
monk is twined all about my heart with loving reverence, and 
the forms which had so deep a spiritual significance to him, 
could never excite in me a mirthful feeling. Then the mere 
circumstance of anticpiity is impressive to a character inclined 
to veneration. There stands the image of what was once a 
living church. A sort of Congress of Religions is she ; with 
the tiara of the Persian priest, the staflT of the Roman augur, 
and the embroidered mantle of the Jewish rabbi. This is all 
natural ; for the Christian Idea was a resurrection from 
deceased Heathenism and Judaism, and rose encumbered with 



LETTERS PROM NEW YORK. 179 

the grave-clothes and jewels of the dead. The Greek and 
E-oman, when they became Christian, still clung fondly to the 
reminiscences of their early faith. The undying flame on 
Apollo's shrine re-appeared in ever-lighted candles on the 
Christian altar ; and the same idea that demanded vestal 
virgins for the heathen temple, set nuns apart for the Christian 
sanctuary. Tiara and embroidered garments were sacred to 
the imagination of the converted Jew; and conservatism, 
which in man's dual nature ever keeps innovation in check, led 
him to adopt them in his new worship. Thus did the 
spirituality of Christ come to us loaded with old forms, not 
naturally or spontaneously flowing therefrom. The very 
cathedrals, with their clustering columns and intertwining 
arches, were architectural models of the groves and " high- 
places," sacred to the mind of the Pagans, who from infancy 
had therein worshipped their " strange gods." The days of the 
Christian week took the names of heathen deities, and statues 
of Yenus were adored as Virgin Mothers. The bronze image 
of St. Peter, at Pome, whose toe has been kissed away by 
devotees, was once a statue of Jupiter. An English traveller 
took off his hat to it as Jupiter, and asked him, if he ever 
recovered his power, to reward the only individual that ever 
bowed to him in his adversity. 

Let us not smile at this old commingling of religious fiiiths 
and forms. It is most natural ; and must ever be, when a 
new idea evolves itself from the old. The Peformers, to evade 
this tendency, destroyed the churches, the paintings, and the 
statues, which habit had so long endeared to the hearts and 
imaginations of men ; yet while they flung away, with ruthless 
hand, all the poetry of the old establishment, they were them- 
selves so much the creatures of education, that they brought 
into the new order of things many cumbrous forms of theology, 
the mere results of tradition ; and the unpretending fisherman, 
and tent-maker, still remained Saint Peter and Saint Paul. 

Protestants make no images of Moses ; but many divide the 
homage of Christ with him, and spiritually kiss his toe. Thus 
will the glory of a coming church walk in the shadow of our 
times, casting a radiance over that which it cannot quite dispel. 

I think it is Mosheim who says, '-After Christianity 
became incorporated with the government, it is diSicult to 
determine whether Heathenism was most Christianised, or 
Christianity most heathenised." 



180 LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 

Woe for the hour, when moral truth became wedded to 
politics, and religion was made to subserve purposes of state. 
That prostration of reason to authority still fetters the ex- 
tremest Protestant of the nineteenth century, after the lapse of 
of more than a thousand years, and a succession of convulsive 
efforts to throw it off. That boasted "triumph of Christianity," 
came near being its destruction. The old fable of the Pleiad 
fallen from the sky, by her marriage with an earth-born prince, 
is full of significance, in many applications ; and none more so, 
than the attempt to advance a spiritual principle by political 
machinery. Constantino legalised Christianity, and straight- 
way the powers of this world made it their tool. To this day 
two-thirds of Christians look outward to ask whether a thing 
is law, and not inward to ask whether it is right. They have 
mere legal consciences ; and do not perceive that human law 
is sacred only when it is the expression of a divine principle. 
To them, the slave trade is justifiable while the law sanctions 
it, and becomes piracy, when the law pronounces it so. The 
moral principle that changes laws, never emanates from them. 
It acts on them, but never with them. They through whom 
it acts, constitute the real church of the world, by whatsoever 
name they are called. 

The Catholic church is a bad foundation for liberty, civil or 
religious. I deprecate its obvious and undeniable tendency to 
enslave the human mind ; but I marvel not that the imagina- 
tions of men are chained and led ca]:)tive by this vision of the 
past ; for it is encircled all around with poetry, as with a halo; 
and within its fantastic pageantry there is much that makes it 
sacred to the aftections. 

At the present time, indications are numerous that the 
human mind is tired out in the gymnasium of controversy, and 
asks earnestly for repose, protection, mystery, and undoubting 
faith. This tendency betrays itself in the rainbow mysticism 
of Coleridge, the patriarchal tenderness of Wordsworth, the 
infinite aspiration of Beethoven. The reverential habit of 
mind varies its forms, according to temperament and character. 
In some minds, it shows itself in a superstitious fondness for 
all old forms of belief ; the Church which is proved to their 
minds to resemble the apostolic, in its ritual, as well as its 
creed, is therefore the true Church. In other minds, venera- 
tion takes a form less obviously religious ; it is shown by a 
strong afiection for everything antique ; they w^orship shadowy 



LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 181 

legends, architectural ruins, and ancient customs. This habit 
of thought enabled Sir Walter to conjure up the guardian 
spirit of the house of Avenel, and re-people the regal halls of 
Kenilworth. His works were the final efflorescence of feudal 
grandeur ; that system had passed away from political forms, 
and no longer had a home in human reason : but it lingered 
wdtli a dim glory in the imagination, and blossomed thus 
amidst ruins. 

Another class of minds rise to a higher plane of reverence; 
their passion for the past becomes mingled with earnest aspir- 
ation for the holy. Such spirits walk in a golden fog of 
mysticism, which leads them far, often only to bring them back 
in a circling path to the faith of childhood, and the established 
laws of the realm. 

To such, Puseyism comes forward, like a fine old cathedral 
made visible by a gush of moonlight. It appeals to the ancient, 
the venerable and the mossgrown. It promises permanent 
repose in the midst of endless agitation. The young, the poetic, 
and the mystical are charmed with "the dim religious light" 
from its painted oriels; they enter its gothic aisles, resounding 
with the echoes of the past; and the solemn glory fills them 
with worship. Episcopacy rebukes, and dissenters argue; but 
that which ministers to the sentiment of reverence, will have 
power over many souls who hunt in vain for trutli through the 
mazes of argument. To the ear that loves music, and sits 
listening intently for the voice that speaks while the dove 
descends from heaven, how discordant, how altogether un- 
profitable, is this hammering of sects! — this coopering and 
heading up of empty barrels, so industriously carried on in 
theological schools ! When I am stunned by the loud and 
many-tongued jargon of sect, I no longer wonder that men 
are ready to fall down and worship Romish absurdities, dressed 
up in purple robes and golden crown; the marvel rather is, 
that they have not returned to the worship of the ancient 
graces, the sun, the moon, the stars, or even the element of 
fire. 

But be not disturbed by Pope or Pusey. They are but a 
part of the check-and-balance system of the universe, and in 
due time will yield to something better. Modes of faith last 
just as long as they are needed in the order of Providence, and 
not a day longer. Let the theologian fume and fret as he may, 
truth cannot be forced above its level, any more than its great 



182 LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 

prototype, water. Of what avail are sectarian efforts, and con- 
troversial words 1 Live thou a holy life — let thy utterance be 
that of a free, meek sjDirit ! Thus, and not by ecclesiastical 
machinery, wilt thou help to prepare the world for a wiser 
faith and a purer worship. 

Meanwhile, let us hope and trust ; and respect sincere devo- 
tion, wheresoever found. A wise mind never despises aught 
that flows from a feeling heart. Nothing would tempt me to 
disturb, even by the rustle of my garments, the Irish servant 
girl, kneeling in the crowded aisle. Blessed be any power, 
which, even for a moment, brings the human soul to the foot of 
the cross, conscious of its weakness and its ignorance, its errors 
and its sins. We may call it superstition if we will, but the 
zealous faith of the Catholic is everywhere conspicuous above 
that of the Protestant. A friend from Canada lately told me 
an incident which deeply impressed this fact upon his mind. 
When they cut new roads through the woods, the priests are 
in the habit of inspecting all the places where villages are to be 
laid out. They choose the finest site for a church, and build 
thereon a high, strong cross, with railings round it, about three 
feet distant from each other. The inner enclosure is usually 
more elevated than the outer; a mound being raised about the 
, foot of the cross. Inserted in the main timber is a small image 
of the crucified Saviour, defended from the atmosjDhere by glass. 
In Catholic countries, this is called a Calvare. In the village 
called Fetit Brule (because when nearly all the dwellings of 
the first settlers had been consumed by tire) was one of these 
tall Calrares, rendered conspicuous by its whiteness among the 
dense foliage of the forest. My friend had been riding for a 
long time in silence and solitude, and twilight was fast deep- 
ening into evening, when his horse suddenly reared, and showed 
signs of fear. Thinking it most prudent to understand the 
nature of the danger that awaited him, he stopped the horse, 
and looked cautiously round. The tall white cross stood near, 
in distinct relief against the dark back-ground of the forest, 
and at the foot were two Irishmen kneeling to say their even- 
ing prayers. They were poor, labouring men, employed in 
making the road. There was no human habitation for miles. 
From their own rude shantees, they must have walked at least 
two or three miles, after their severe daily toil, thus to bow 
down and worship the Infinite, in a place they deemed holy ! 
Let those who can, ridicule the superstition that prompted 



LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 183 

such an act. Hereafter, may angels teach what remained 
unrevealed to them on earth, that Christ is truly worshipped, 
"neither on this mountain, nor yet at Jerusalem." 

I love the Irish. Blessings on their warm hearts, and their 
leaping ftmcies! Clarkson records that while opposition met 
him in almost every form, not a single Irish member of the 
British Parliament ever voted against the abolition of the slave 
trade; and how is the heart of that generous island now 
throbbing with sympathy for the oppressed! 

Creatures of impulse and imagination, their very speech is 
poetry. "What are you going to kill?" said I to one of the 
most stupid of Irish serving-maids, who seemed in great haste 
to crush some object in the corner of the room. "A black 
boog, ma'am," she replied. "That is a cricket," said I. "It 
does no harm, but makes a friendly chirping on the hearth- 
stone." 

"Och, and is it a cricket it is? And when the night is 
abroad, will it be spakingl Sure I'll not be after killing it at 
all." 

The most faithful and warm-hearted of the Irish labourers 
(and the good among them are the best on earth) urged me 
last spring not to fail, by any means, to rise before the sun on 
Easter morning. "The Easter sun always dances when it 
rises," said he. Assuredly he saw no mockery in my coun- 
tenance, but perhaps he saw incredulity ; for, he added, with 
pleasing earnestness, "And why should it not dance, by reason 
of rejoicement]" In his believing ignorance, he had small 
cause to envy me the superiority of my reason; at least I felt 
so for the moment. Beautiful is the superstition that makes 
all nature hail the holy; that sees the cattle all kneel at the 
hour Christ was born, and the sun dance, "by reason of 
rejoicement," on the morning of his resurrection ; that believes 
the dark cross, actually found on the back of every ass, was 
first placed there when Jesus rode into Jerusalem with palm- 
branches strewed before him. 

Not in vain is Ireland pouring itself all over the earth. 
Divine Providence has a mission for her children to fulfil; 
though a mission unrecognised by political economists. There 
is ever a moral balance preserved in the universe, like the 
vibrations of the pendulum. The Irish, with their glowing- 
hearts and reverent credulity, are needed in this cold age of 
intellect and scepticism. 



184: LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 

Africa fiirnislies another class, in wliom the heart ever 
takes guidance of the head ; and all over the world the way is 
opening for them among the nations. Heyti and the British 
West Indies ; Algiers, settled by the French ; British colonies, 
spreading over the west and south of Africa ; and emancipation 
urged throughout the civilised world. 

Women, too, on whose intellect ever rests the warm light of 
the affections, are obviously coming into a wider and wider field 
of action. 

All these things prophesy of physical force yielding to moral 
sentiment ; and they all are agents to fulfil what they prophesy. 
God speed the hour. 



LETTER XXXIY. 

woman's rights. 



January, 1843. 



You ask what are my opinions about "Woman's Bights." 
I confess a strong distaste to the subject, as it has been gener- 
ally treated. On no other theme, probably, has there been ut- 
tered so much of false, mawkish sentiment, shallow philosophy, 
and sputtering, farthing-candle wit. If the style of its advo- 
cates has often been ofiensive to taste, and unacceptable to 
reason, assuredly that of its opponents have been still more so. 
College boys have amused themselves with writing dreams, in 
which they saw women in hotels, with their feet hoisted, and 
chairs tilted back, or growling and bickering at each other in 
legislative halls, or fighting at the polls, with eyes blackened by 
fisticuffs. But it never seems to have occurred to these facetious 
writers, that the proceedings which appear so ludicrous and im- 
proper in women are also ridiculous and disgraceful in men. It 
were well that men should learn not to hoist their feet above their 
heads, and tilt their chairs backward, not to growl and snap in 
the halls of legislation, or give each other black eyes at the polls. 

Maria Edge worth says, " We are disgusted when we see a wo- 
man's mind overwhelmed with a torrent of learning ; that the 
tide of literature has passed over it should be betrayed only by 
its fertility." This is beautiful and true ; but is it not likewise 
applicable to man ? The truly great never seek to display 
themselves. If they carry their heads high above the crowd, 



LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 185 

it is only made manifest to others by accidental revelations of 
their extended vision. " Human duties and proprieties do not 
lie so very far apart/' said Harriet Martineau ; " if they did, 
there would be two gospels and two teachers, one for man 
and another for woman." 

It would seem, indeed, as if men were willing to give women 
exclusive benefit of gospel-teaching. " Women should be gen- 
tle," say the advocates of subordination ; but when Christ said, 
" Blessed are the meek," did he preach to women only ] " Girls 
should be modest," is the language of common teaching, con- 
tinually uttered in Avords and customs. Would it not be an im- 
provement for men, also, to be scrupulously pure in manners, 
conversation and life ? Books addressed to young married people 
abound with advice to the wife, to control her temper, and never 
to utter wearisome complaints, or vexatious words, when the 
husband comes home fretful or unreasonable from his out-of-door 
conflicts with the world. Would not the advice be as excellent 
and appropriate, if the husband were advised to conquer his fret- 
fulness, and forbear his complaints, in consideration of his wife's 
ill-health, fatiguing cares, and the thousand disheartening in- 
fluences of domestic routine] In short, whatsoever can be named 
as loveliest, best, and most graceful in woman, would likewise 
be good and graceful in man. You will perhaps remind me of 
courage 1 If you use the word in its highest signification, I 
answer that woman, above others, hath abundant need of it in 
her pilgrimage ; and the true woman wears it with a quiet grace. 
If you mean mere animal courage, that is not mentioned in the 
sermon on the Mount, among those qualities which enable us to 
inherit the earth, or become the children of God. That the 
feminine ideal approaches much nearer to the gospel stnndard, 
than the prevalent idea of manhood is shown by the universal 
tendency to represent the Saviour and his most beloved disciple 
with mild, meek expression, and feminine beauty. None speak 
of the bravery, the might, or the intellect of Jesus ; but the 
devil is always imagined as a being of acute intellect, political 
cunning, and the fiercest courage. These universal and instinc- 
tive tendencies of the human mind reveal much. 

That the present i)osition of women in society is the result of 
physical force is obvious enough ; whosoever doubts it, let her 
reflect why she is afraid to go out in the evening without the 
protection of a man. What constitutes the danger of aggres- 
sion ? Superior physical strength, uncontrolled by the moral 



186 LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 

sentiments. If physical strength were in complete subjection 
to moral influence, there would be no need of outward protection. 
That animal instinct and brute force now govern the world, is 
painfully appai-ent in the condition of women everywhere ; from 
the Morduan Tartars, whose ceremony of marriage consists in 
placing the bride on a mat, and consigning her to the bride- 
groom, with the words, '' Here, wolf, take thy lamb," — to the 
German remark, that " stiff ale, stinging tobacco, and a girl in 
her smart dress, are the best things." The same sentiment, 
softened by the refinements of civilisation, peeps out in Stephen's 
remark, that " woman never looks so interesting, as when lean- 
ing on the arm of a soldier:'' and in Hazlitt's complaint that "it 
is not easy to keep up a conversation with women in company. 
It is thought a piece of rudeness to differ from them j it is not 
quite fair to ask them a reason for what they say." 

This sort of politeness to women is what men call gallantry ; 
an odious word to every sensible woman, because she sees that 
it is merely the flimsy veil which foppery throws over sensuality, 
to conceal its grossness. So far is it from indicating sincere 
esteem and affection for woman, that the profligacy of a nation 
may, in general, be fairly measured by its gallantry. This tak- 
ing away rights, and condescending to grant privileges, is an 
old trick of the physical force principle ; and with the immense 
majority, who only look on the surface of things, this mask 
effectually disguises an ugliness, which would otherwise be ab- 
horred. The most inveterate slaveholders were those who took 
most pride in dressing their household servants handsomely, 
and who would be most ashamed to have the name of being un- 
necessarily cruel. And profligates, who form the lowest and 
most sensual estimate of women, are the very ones to treat 
them with an excess of outward deference. 

There are few books which I can read through without feel- 
ing insulted as a woman ; but this insult is almost universally 
conveyed through that which was intended for praise. Just 
imagine, for a moment, what impression it would make on men, 
if women authors should write about their " rosy lips, " and 
" melting eyes, " and " voluptuous forms, " as they write about 
us ! That women in general do not feel this kind of flattery to 
to be an insult, I readily admit ; for in the first place, they do 
not perceive the gross chattel-principle of which it is the utter- 
ance ; moreover, they have, from long habit, become accustomed 
to consider themselves as household conveniences, or gilded toys. 



LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 187 

Hence, they consider it feminine and pretty to adjure all sucli 
use of their faculties as would make them co-workers with man 
in the advancement of those great principles, on which the pro- 
gress of society depends. " There is perhaps no animal, " says 
Hannah More, "so much indebted to subordination, for its good 
behaviour, as woman. " Alas, for the animal age, in which 
such utterance could be tolerated by public sentiment ! 

Martha More, sister of Hannah, describing a very impressive 
scene at the funeral of one of her Charity School teachers, says, 
" The spirit within me seemed struggling to speak, and I was 
in a sort of agony ; but I recollected that I had heard, some- 
where, a woman must not speak in the church. Oh, had she 
been buried in the church-yard, a messenger from Mr. Pitt him- 
self should not have restrained me ; for I seemed to have received 
a message from a higher IMaster within, seeking utterance." 

This application of theological teaching carries its own com- 
mentary. 

I have said enough to show that I consider prevalent opinions 
and customs highly unfavourable to the moral and intellectual 
development of women : and I need not say, that, in proportion 
to their true culture, women will be more useful and happy, 
and domestic life more perfected. True culture in them, as in 
men, consists in the full and free development of individual 
character, regulated by their own perceptions of what is true, 
and their own love of what is good. 

This individual responsibility is rarely acknowledged, even 
by the most refined, as necessary to the spiritual progress of 
women. I once heard a very beautiful lecture from R. W. 
Emerson, on Being and Seeming. In the course of many re- 
marks, as true as they were graceful, he urged women to be, 
rather than seem. He told them that all their laboured 
education of forms, strict observance of genteel etiquette, taste- 
ful arrangement of the toilette, &c., all this seeming would not 
gain hearts like being truly what God made them ; that earnest 
simplicity, the sincerity of nature, would kindle the eye, light 
up the countenance, and give an inexpressible charm to the 
plainest features. 

The advice was excellent, but the motive, by which it was 
urged, brought a flush of indignation over my face. Men were 
exhorted to be, rather than to seem, that they might fulfil the 
sacred mission for which their souls were embodied ; that they 
might, in God's freedom, grow up into the full stature of 



188 LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 

spiritual manhood; but women were urged to simplicity and 
truthfulness, that they might become more pleasing. 

Are we not all immortal beings'? Is not each one responsible 
for himself and herself? There is no measuring the mischief 
done by the prevailing tendency to teach women to be virtuous 
as a duty to man, rather than to God — for the sake of pleasing 
the creature, rather than the Creator. "God is thy law, thou 
mine," said Eve to Adam. May Milton be forgiven for send- 
ing that thought ''out into everlasting time" in such a jewelled 
setting. What weakness, vanity, frivolity, infirmity of moral 
purpose, sinful flexibility of principle — in a word, what soul- 
stifling, has been the result of thus putting man in the place of 
God! 

But while I see plainly that society is on a false foundation, 
and that prevailing views concerning women indicate the 
want of wisdom and purity, which they serve to perpetuate — 
still, I must acknowledge that much of the talk about women's 
rights offends both my reason and my taste. I am not of 
those who maintain there is no sex in souls; nor do I like the 
results deducible from that doctrine. Kinmont, in his ad- 
mirable book, called the Natural History of Man, speaking of 
the warlike courage of the ancient German women, and of their 
being respectfully consulted on important public affairs, says, 
"You ask me if I consider all this right, and deserving of 
approbation; or that women were here engaged in their ap- 
propriate tasks'? I answer, yes; it is just as right that they 
should take this interest in the honour of their country, as the 
other sex. Of course, I do not think that women were made 
for war and battle; neither do I believe that men were. But 
since the fashion of the times had made it so, and settled it 
that war was a necessary element of greatness, and that no safety 
was to be procured without it, I argue that it shows a health- 
ful state of feeling in other respects, that the feelings of both 
sexes were equally enlisted in the cause; that there was no 
division in the house, or the state; and that the serious 
pursuits and objects of the one were also the serious pursuits 
and objects of the other." 

The nearer society approaches to divine order, the less 
separation will there be in the characters, duties, and pursuits 
of men and women. Women will not become less gentle and 
graceful, but men will become more so. Women will not 
neglect the care and education of their children, but men will 



LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 189 

find themselves ennobled and refined bj sharing those duties 
with them; and will receive, in return, co-operation and sym- 
pathy in the discharge of various other duties, now deemed in- 
appropriate to women. The more women become rational 
companions, partners in business and in thought, as well as in 
afiection and amusement, the more highly will men appreciate 
home — that blessed word, which opens to the hviman heart the 
most perfect glimpse of Heaven, and helps to cany it thither, 
as on an angel's wings. 

"Domestic bliss, 
That can, tlie \yorl(l eluding, be itself 
A world enjoyed; that wants no Avitnesses 
But its own sharers, and approving heaven ; 
That, like a flower deep hid in rocky cleft, 
Smiles, though 'tis looking only at the sky." 

Alas for these days of palatial houses where families exchange 
comforts for costliness, fireside retirement for flirtation and 
flaunting, and the simple, healthful, cozy meal, for gravies and 
gout, dainties and dyspepsia ! There is no characteristic of 
my countrj^men which I regret so deeply, as their slight degree 
of adhesiveness to home. Closely intertwined with this in- 
stinct, is the religion of a nation. The home and the church 
bear a near relation to each other. The French have no 
such word as home in their language, and I believe they are 
the least reverential and religious of all the Christian nations. 
A Frenchman had been in tlie habit of visiting a lady con- 
stantly for several years, and being alarmed at a report that 
she was sought in marriage, he was asked why he did not 
marry her himself. " Marry her ! " exclaimed he ; " good 
heavens ! where should I spend my evenings "? " The idea of 
domestic happiness was altogether a foreign idea to his soul, 
like a word that conveved no meaninof. Relimous sentiment 
in France leads the same roving life as the domestic affections; 
breakfasting at one restaurateur's, and supping at another's. 
When some wag in Boston reported that Louis-Philippe had 
sent over Dr. Channing to manufacture a religion for the 
French people, the witty significance of the joke was generally 
appreciated. 

There is a deep spiritual reason why all that relates to the 
domestic affections should ever be found in close proximity with 
religious faith. The ago of chivalry was likewise one of un- 
questioning veneration, which led to the crusade for the holy 
sepulchre. 



190 LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 

The French Revolution, which tore down churches, and 
voted that there was no God, likewise annulled marriage ; and 
the doctrine that there is no sex in souls has usually been 
urged by those of infidel tendencies. Carlyle says, " But what 
feeling it was in the ancient, devout, deep soul, which of 
marriage made a sacrament ; this, of all things in the world, 
is what Diderot will think of for aeons without discovering ; 
unless, perhaps, it were to increase the vestry fees." 

The conviction that woman's present position in society is a 
false one, and therefore re-acts disastrously on the happiness 
and improvement of man, is pressing, by slow degrees, on the 
common consciousness, through all the obstacles of bigotry, 
sensuality, and selfishness. As man approaches to the truest 
life, he will j^erceive more and more that there is no separation 
or discord in their mutual duties. They will be one ; but it 
will be as afliection and thought are one ; the treble and bass 
of the same harmonious tune. 



LETTER XXXV. 

LIGHTNING DAGUERROTYPE ELEGTRICTY EFFECTS OF 

CLIMATE. 

February, 1843. 

A BOOK has been lately published called the Westover Manu- 
scripts, written more than a hundred years ago, by Colonel 
William Byrd, an old Virginian cavalier, residing at Westover, 
on the north bank of James River. He relates the following- 
remarkable circumstance, which powerfully arrested my atten- 
tion, and set in motion thoughts that flew beyond the stars, 
and so I lost sight of them, till they again come within my 
vision, in yonder world, where, as the German beautifully 
expresses it, " we shall find our dreams, and only lose our 
sleep." The writer says : 

" Of all the effects of lightning I ever heard of, the most 
amazing happened in this country, in the year 1736. In the 
summer of that year, a surgeon of a ship, whose name was 
Davis, came ashore at York, to visit a patient. He was no 
sooner got into the house, but it began to rain, with many 
terrible claps of thunder. When it was almost dark, there 



LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 191 

came a dreadful flash of lightning, which struck the surgeon 
dead, as he was walking about the room, but hurt no other 
person, though several were near him. At the same time, it 
made a large hole in the trunk of a pine tree, which grew about 
ten feet from the window. But what was most surprising in 
this disaster was, that on the breast of the unfortunate man that 
was killed, ivas the figure of a pine tree, as exactly delineated as 
any limner in the loorld could draw it ; nay, the resemblance 
toent so far as to I'epi'esent the colour of the pine, as well as the 
figure. The lightning must probably have passed through the 
tree before it struck the man, and by that means have printed 
the icon of it on his breast. But whatever may have been the 
cause, the effect was certain, and can be attested by a cloud of 
witnesses, who had the curiosity to go and see this wonderful 
phenomenon." 

This lightning daguerrotype aroused within me the old 
inquiry, ''What is electricity *? Of what spiritual essence is 
it the form and type?" Questions that again and again have 
led my soul in such eager chase through the universe, to find 
an answer, that it has come back weary, as if it had carried 
heavy weights, and traversed Saturn's rings in magnetic sleep. 
Thick clouds come between me and this mystery, into which I 
have searched for years ; but I see burning lines of light along 
the edges, which significantly indicate the glory it veils. 

I sometimes think electricity is the medium which puts man 
into relation with all things, enabling him to act on all. It is 
now well established as a scientific fact though long regarded 
as an idle superstition, that some men can ascertain the vicinity 
of water, under ground, by means of a divining rod. Thouenel, 
and other scientific men in Franco, account for it by supposing 
that '' the water forms w^ith the earth above it, and the fluids 
of the human body, a galvanic circle." The human body is 
said to be one of the best conductors yet discovered, and 
nervous or debilitated j^ersons to be better conductors than 
those in sound health. If the body of the operator be a very 
good conductor, the rod in his hand will be forcibly drawn 
towards the earth, whenever he approaches a vein of water, 
that lies near the surface. If silk gloves or stockings are 
worn, the attraction is interrupted ; and it varies in degree, 
according as any substances between the water and the hand 
of the operator are more or less good conductors of the galvanic 
fluid. 



192 LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 

We know what a frightful imitation of life can be produced 
in a dead body by the galvanic battery. 

The animal magnetiser often feels as if strength had gone 
out of him ; and it is very common for persons in magnetic 
sleep to speak of bright emanations from the fingers which are 
making passes over them. 

What is this invisible, all-pervading essence, which thus has 
power to put man into communication with all 1 That man 
contains the universe within himself, philosophers conjectured 
aofes ago ; and therefore named him "the microcosm." If man 
led a true life, he would, doubtless, come into harmonious rela- 
tion with all forms of being, and thus his instincts would be 
universal, and far more certain and perfect, than those of 
animals. The bird knows what plant will cure the bite of a 
serpent ; and if man led a life as true to the laws of his being, 
as the bird does to hers, he would have no occasion to study 
medicine, for he would at once perceive the medicinal quality 
of every herb and mineral. His inventions are, in fact, only 
discoveries ; for all existed, before he applied it, and called it 
his own. The upholsterer-bee had a perfect cutting instrument, 
ages before scissors were invented ; the mason-bee cemented 
pebbles together, for his dwelling, centuries before houses were 
built with stone and mortar ; the wasp of Cayenne made her 
nest of beautiful white card paper, cycles before paper was 
invented ; the lightning knew how to print images, aeons before 
Monsieur Daguerre found out half the process — viz. : the form 
without the colour ; the bee knew how to take up the least 
possible room in the construction of her cells, long before 
mathematicians discovered that she had worked out the pro- 
blem perfectly ; and I doubt not fishes had the very best of 
submarine reflectors, before Mrs. Mather invented her ocean 
telescope, which shov/s a pin distinctly on the muddy bottom 
of the bay. 

I cannot recall the name of the ancient philosopher, who 
spent his days in watching insects and other animals, that he 
might gather hints to fashion tools ; but the idea has long been 
familiar to my mind, that every conceivable thing which has 
been, or will be invented, already exists in nature, in some 
form or other. Man alone can reproduce all things of creation; 
because he contains the whole in himself, and all forms of 
being flow into his, as a common centre. 

Of what spiritual thing is electricity the type 1 Is there a 



LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 193 

universal mediam by which all things of spirit act on the soul, 
as matter on the body by means of electricity ? And is that 
medium the will, whether of angels or of men ] Wonderful 
stories are told of early friends, how they were guided by a 
sudden and powerful impulse, to avoid some particular bridge, 
or leave some particular house, and subsequent events showed 
that danger was there. Many people consider this fanaticism ; 
but I have faith in it. I believe the most remarkable of these 
accounts give but a faint idea of the perfection to which man's 
moral and physical instincts might attain, if his life were 
obedient and true. 

Though in vigorous health, I am habitually affected by the 
weather. I never indulge in gloomy thoughts ; but resolutely 
turn away my gaze from the lone stubble waving in the autumn 
wind, and think only of the ripe, golden seed which the sower 
will go forth to sow. But when to the dreariness of departing 
summer is added a week of successive rains ; when day after 
day the earth under foot is slippery mud, and the sky over 
head is like grey marble, then my nature yields itself prisoner 
to utter melancholy. I am ashamed to confess it, and hun- 
dreds of times have struggled desperately against it, unwilling 
to be conquered by the elements, looking at me with an " evil 
eye." But so it is — a protracted rain always convinces me that 
I never did any good, and never can do any ; that I love no- 
body, and nobody loves me. I have heard that Dr. Franklin 
acknowledges a similar effect on himself, and philosophically 
conjectures the physical cause. He says animal spirits depend 
greatly on the presence of electricity in our bodies; and during 
long-continued rain, the dampness of the atmosphere absorbs a 
large portion of it; for this reason, he advises that a silk waist- 
coat be worn next the skin, silk being a non-conductor of 
electricity. Perhaps this precaution might diminish the 
number of suicides in the foggy month of November, " when 
Englishmen are so prone to hang and drown themselves." 

Animal magnetism is connected, in some unexplained way, 
with electricity. All those who have tried it, are aware that 
there is a metallic feeling occasioned by the magnetic passes — 
a sort of attraction, as one might imagine the magnet and the 
steel to feel when brought near each other. The magnetiser 
passes his hands over the subject, without touching, and at the 
end of each operation shakes them, precisely as if he were 
conducting off electric fluid. If this is the actual effect, the 

N -l 



194 LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 

drowsiness, stupor, and final insensibility, may be occasioned 
by a cause similar to that which produces heaviness and 
depression of spirits in rainy weather. Why it should be so, in 
either case, none can tell. The most learned have no knowledge 
what electricity is; they can only tell what it does, not how it 
does it. That the state of the atmosphere has prodigious efiect 
on human temperament, is sufficiently indicated by the character 
of nations. The Frenchman owes his sanguine hopes, his 
supple limbs, his untiring vivacity, to a genial climate; to this, 
also, in a great measure, the Italian owes his pliant graceful- 
ness and impulsive warmth. The Dutchman, on his level 
marshes, could never dance La Sylphide; nor the Scotch girl, 
on her foggy hills, become an improvisatrice. The French 
dance into everything, on everything, and over everything; for 
they live where the breezes dance among vines, and the sun 
showers down gold to the piper ; and dance they must, for glad- 
some sympathy. We call them of "mercurial" temperament; 
— according to Dr. Franklin's theory, they are surcharged with 
electricity. 

In language, too, how plainly one perceives the influence of 
climate ! Languages of northern origin abound in consonants, 
and sound like clanging metals, or the tipping up of a cart-load 
of stones. The southern languages flow like a rill that moves to 
music; the liquid vowels so sweetly melt into each other. This 
diflerence is observable even in the dialect of our northern and 
southern tribes of Indians. At the north, we find such words 
as Carratunk, Scowhegan, Norridgewock, and Memphremagog ; 
at the south, Pascagoula, Santee, and that most musical of all 
names, Oceola. 

Climate has had its efiect, too, on the religious ideas of 
nations. How strongly does the bloody Woden and the 
thundering Thor, of northern mythology, contrast with the 
beautiful graces and gliding nymphs of Grecian origin. As 
a general rule (sometimes affected by local causes), southern 
nations cling to the pictured glory of the Catholic Church, 
while the northern assimilate better with the severe plainness 
of the Protestant. 

If I had been reared from infancy under the cloudless sky 
of Athens, perhaps I might have bounded over the earth as if 
my "element were air, and music but the echo of my steps;" 
the caution that looks where it treads, might have been changed 
for the ardent gush of a Sappho's song; the sunbeam might 



LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 195 

have passed into my soul, and written itself on the now 
thoughtful countenance in perpetual smiles. 

Do you complain of this, as you do of phrenology, and say 
that it favours fatalism too much? I answer, no matter what 
it favours if it be truth. No two truths ever devoured each 
other, or ever can. Look among the families of your acquain- 
tance — you will see two brothers vigorous, intelligent, and 
enterprising ; the third was like them, till he fell on his head, 
had fits, and was ever after puny and stupid. There are two 
sunny-tempered, graceful girls — their sister might have been as 
cheerful as they, but their father died suddenly, before her 
birth, and the mother's sorrow chilled the fountains of her infant 
life, and she is nervous, deformed, and fretful. Is there no 
fatality, as you call it, in this? Assuredly, we are all, in some 
degree, the creatures of outward circumstance; but this in 
nowise disturbs the scale of moral responsibility, or prevents 
equality of happiness. Our responsibility consists in the use 
we make of our possessions, not on their extent. Salvation 
comes to all through obedience to the light they have, be it 
much or little. Happiness consists not in having much, but in 
wanting no more than we have. The idiot is as happy in 
playing at Jack Straws, or blowing bubbles all the livelong day, 
as Newton was in watching the great choral dance of the 
planets. The same universe lies above and around both. 
"The mouse can drink no more than his fill at the mightiest 
river;" yet he enjoys his draught as well as the elephant. 
Thus are we all unequal, yet ecjual. That we are, in part, 
creatures of necessity, who that has tried to exert free will can 
doubt *? But it is a necessity which has power only over the 
outw^ard, and can never change evil into good, or good into evil. 
It may compel us to j)ostpone or forbear the good we would 
fain do, but it cannot compel us to commit the evil. 

If a consideration of all these outward influences teach us 
charity for the deficiencies of others, and a strict watch over 
our own weaknesses, they will perform their appropriate office. 

**Th€re is so much of good among the worst, so much of evil in the 

best. 
Such seeming partialities in Providence, so many things to lessen and 

expand, 
Yea, and with all man's boast, so little real freedom of his will, 
That to look a little lower than the surface, garb or dialect, or fashion, 
Thou shaft feebly pronounce for a saint, and faintly condemn for a 

sinner. " 



196 LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 

LETTEK XXXYI. 

THE INDIANS. 



March, 1843. 



I WENT, a few evenings ago, to the American Museum, to see 
fifteen Indians fresh from the western forest. Sacs, Fox, and 
lowas, really important people in their respective tribes. Nan- 
Nouce-Fush-E-To, which means the Buifalo King, is a famous 
Sac chief, sixty years old, covered with scars, and grim as a 
Hindoo god, or pictures of the devil on a Portuguese 
contribution box, to help sinners through purgatory. It is said 
that he has killed with his own hand one hundred Osages, 
three Mohawks, two Kas, two Sioux, and one Pawnee; and if 
we may judge by his organ of destructiveness, the story is 
true ; a more enormous bump I never saw in that region of the 
skull. He speaks nine Indian dialects, has visited almost 
every existing tribe of his race, and is altogether a very re- 
markable personage. Mon-To-Gah, the White Bear, wears a 
medal from President Munroe for certain services rendered to 
the whites. Wa-Con-To-Kitch-Er is an Iowa chief, of grave 
and thoughtful countenance, held in much veneration as the 
prophet of his tribe. He sees visions, which he communicates 
to them for their spiritual instruction. Among the squaws is 
No-Nos-See, the She- Wolf, a niece of the famous Black Hawk, 
and very proud of the relationship; and Do-Hum-Me, the Pro- 
ductive Pumkin, a very handsome woman, with a great deal of 
heart and happiness in her countenance. 

"Smiles settled on her sun-flecked clieeks, 
Like noon upon the mellow apricot." 

She was married about a fortnight ago, at Philadelphia, to Cow- 
Hick-He, son of the principal chief of the low^as, and as noble 
a specimen of manhood as I ever looked upon. Indeed, I have 
never seen a group of human beings so athletic, well-propor- 
tioned, and majestic. They are a keen satire on our civilised 
customs, which produce such feeble forms and pallid faces. The 
unlimited pathway, the broad horizon, the free grandeur of the 
forest, has passed into their souls, and so stands revealed in 
their material forms. 

We who have robbed the Indians of their lands, and worse 



LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 197 

Still, of themselves, are very fond of proving their inferiority. 
We are told that t\iQ facial angle in the 



Caucasian Race is . 


85 degrees. 


Asiatic, .... 


78 „ 


American Indian, 


73 „ 


Ethiopian, 


70 „ 


Ourang Outang, 


67 „ 



This simply proves that the Caucasian race, through a suc- 
cession of ages, has been exposed to influences eminently cal- 
culated to develop the moral and intellectual faculties. That 
they started first in the race, might have been owing to a finer 
and more susceptible nervous organisation, originating in 
climate, perhaps, but serving to bring the physical organisation 
into more harmonious relation with the laws of spiritual re- 
ception. But by whatever agency it might have been produced, 
the nation, or race that perceived even one spiritual idea in 
advance of others, would necessarily go on improving in 
geometric ratio, through the lapse of ages. For our past, we 
have the oriental fervour, gorgeous imagery, and deep reverence 
of the Jews, flowing from that high fountain, the perception of 
the oneness aud invisibility of God. From the Greeks we re- 
ceive the very Spirit of Beauty, flowing into all forms of philo- 
sophy and art, encircled by a golden halo of Platonism, which 

"Far over many a land and age hath shone, 
And mingles with the light that beams from God's own throne." 

These have been transmitted to us in their own forms, and 
again reproduced through the classic strength and high cul- 
tivation of Rome, and the romantic minstrelsy and rich 
architecture of the middle ages. Thus we stand, a congress of 
ages, each with a glory on its brow, peculiar to itself, yet in 
part reflected from the glory that went before. 

But what have the African savage and the wandering Indian 
for their pasf? To fight for food, and grovel in the senses, has 
been the employment of their ancestors. The past reproduced 
in them, belongs mostly to the animal part of our mixed nature. 
They have indeed come in contact with the race on which had 
dawned higher ideas; but how have they come in contact *? As 
victims, not as pupils. Rum, gunpowder, the horrors of slavery, 
the unblushing knavery of trade, these have been their teachers ! 
And because these have failed to produce a high degree of 



198 LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 

moral and intellectual cultivation, we coolly declare that tlie 
negroes are made for slaves, that the Indians cannot be civi- 
lised ; and that when either of the races come in contact with 
us, they must either consent to be our beasts of burden, or be 
driven to the wall and perish. 

That the races of mankind are different, spiritually as well 
as physically, there is, of course, no doubt; but it is as the 
difference between trees of the same forest, not as between trees 
and minerals. The facial angle and shape of the head is various 
in races and nations; but these are the effects of spiritual influ- 
ences, long operating on character, and in their turn becoming- 
causes ; thus intertwining, as past and future ever do. 

But it is urged that Indians who have been put to schools 
and colleges still remained attached to a roving life; away 
from all these advantages, 

"His blanket tied with yellow strings, the Indian of the forest went." 

And what if he did 1 Do not white young men, who have been 
captured by savages in infancy, show an equally strong disin- 
clination to take upon themselves the restraints of civilised 
life*? Does anybody urge that this well-known fact proves the 
white race incapable of civilisation? 

You ask, perhaps, what becomes of my theory that races and 
individuals are the product of ages, if the influences of half a 
life produce the same effects on the Caucasian and the Indian? 
I answer, that white children brought up among Indians, though 
they strongly imbibe the habits of the race, are generally prone 
to be the geniuses and prophets of their tribe. The organisation 
of nerve and brain has been changed by a more harmonious re- 
lation between the animal and the spiritual; and this com- 
parative harmony has been produced by the influences of Judea, 
Greece, and Home, and the age of chivalry ; though of all these 
things the young man never heard. 

Similar influences brought to bear on the Indians or the 
Africans, as a race, will gradually change the structure of their 
skulls, and enlarge their perceptions of moral and intellectual 
truth. The same influences cannot be brought to bear upon 
them ; for their past is not our past, and of course never can 
be. But let ours mingle with theirs, and you will find the 
result varied, without inferiority. They will be flutes on 
different notes, and so harmonise the better. 

And how is this elevation of all races to be eflected ? By 



LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 199 

that which worketh all miracles, in the name of Jesus — the 
law of love. We must not teach as superiors ; we must love 
as brothers. Here is the great deficiency in all our efforts for 
the ignorant and the criminal. We stand apart from them, 
and expect them to feel grateful for our condescension in notic- 
ing them at all. We do not embrace them loarmly with our 
symjoathies, and put our souls into their souls' stead. 

But even under this great disadvantage ; accustomed to our 
smooth, deceitful talk, when we want their lands, and to the 
cool villany with which we break treaties when our purposes 
are gained ; receiving gunpowder and rum from the very hands 
which retain from them all the better influences of civilised 
life ; cheated by knavish agents, cajoled by government, and 
hunted with bloodhounds — still, under all these disadvantages, 
the Indians have shown that they can be civilised. Of this, 
the Choctaws and Cherokees are admirable proofs. Both these 
tribes have a regularly-organised, systematic government, in 
the democratic form, and a printed constitution. The right of 
trial by jury, and other principles of a free government, are 
established on a permanent basis. They have good farms, 
cotton-gins, saw-mills, schools, and churches. Their dwellings 
are generally comfortable, and some of them are handsome. 
The last annual messaoje of the chief of the Cherokees is a 
highly-interesting document, which would not compare dis- 
advantageously with any of our governors' messages. It states 
that more than £625,000 are due to them from the United 
States ; and recommends that this sum be obtained, and in 
part distributed among the people ; but that the interest of the 
school fund be devoted to the maintenance of schools, and the 
diffusion of knowledge. 

There was a time when our ancestors, the ancient Britons, 
went nearly without clothing, painted their bodies in fantastic 
fashion, offered up human victims to uncouth idols, and lived 
in hollow trees, or rude habitations, which we should now con- 
sider unfit for cattle. Making all due allowance for the 
different state of the world, it is much to be questioned whether 
they made more rapid advancement than the Cherokees and 
Choctaws. 

It always fills me with sadness to see Indians surrounded 
by the false environment of civilised life; but I never felt so 
deep a sadness as I did in looking upon these western warriors ; 
for they were evidently the noblest of their dwindling race. 



200 LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 

unused to restraint, accustomed to sleep beneath the stars. 
And here they were, set up for a two-shilling show, with mon- 
keys, flamingoes, dancers, and buffoons ! If they understood our 
modes of society well enough to be aware of their degraded 
position, they would doubtless quit it with burning indignation 
at the insult. But as it is, they allow women to examine their 
beads, and children to play with their wampum, with the most 
philosophic indifference. In their imperturbable countenances, 
I thought I could once or twice detect a slight expression of 
scorn at the eager curiosity of tlie crowd. The Albiness, a 
short woman, with pink eyes, and hair like white floss, was the 
only object that visibly amused them. The young chiefs nod- 
ded to her often, and exchanged smiling remarks with each 
other, as they looked atyier. Upon all the buffooneries and 
legerdermain tricks of the Museum, they gazed as unmoved as 
John Knox himself could have done. I would have given a 
good deal to know their thoughts, as mimic cities and fairy 
grottoes and mechanical dancing figures rose and sunk before 
them. The mechanical figures were such perfect imitations of 
life, and went through so many wonderful evolutions, that they 
might well surprise even those accustomed to the marvels of 
mechanism. But Indians, who pay religious honours to ven- 
erable rocks and moss-grown trees, who believe that brutes 
have souls as well as men, and that all nature is filled with 
spirits, might well doubt whether there was not here some 
supernatural agency, either good or evil. I w^ould suffer almost 
anything if my soul could be transmigrated into the She Wolf, 
or the Productive Pumpkin, and their souls pass consciously 
into my frame for a few days, that I might exj^erience the 
fashion of their thoughts and feelings. Was there ever such a 
foolish wish! The soul is Me, and is Thee. I might as well 
put on their blankets as their bodies, for purposes of spiritual 
insight. In that other w^orld shall we be enabled to know 
exactly how heaven and earth and hell apj)ear to other persons, 
nations, and tribes'? I would it might be so; for I have an in- 
tense desire for such revelations. I do not care to travel to 
Home, or St. Petersburg, because I can only look at people; 
and I want to look into them, and through them; to know how 
things appear to their spiritual eyes, and sound to their sj^iritual 
ears. This is a universal want; hence the intense interest 
taken in autobiography by all classes of readers. Oh, if any 
one had but the courage to write the whole truth of himself, 



LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 201 

undisguised, as it appears before the eye of God and angels, the 
world would read it, and it would soon be translated into all 
the dialects of the universe. 

But these children of the forest do not even give us glimpses 
of their inner life ; for they consider that the body was given 
to conceal the emotions of the soul. The stars look down into 
their hearts, as into mine; the broad ocean, glittering in the 
moonbeams, speaks to them of the infinite; and, doubtless, the 
wild flowers and the sea-shells ''talk to them in thought." But 
what thoughts, what revelations of the infinite'? This would I 
give the world to know ; but the world cannot buy an answer. 

How foreign is my soul to that of the beautiful Do-Hum-Me ! 
How helpless should I be in situations where she would be a 
heroine; and how little could she comprehend my eager thought, 
which seeks the creative three-in-one throughout the universe, 
a,nd finds it in every blossom and every mineral. Between 
Wa-Con-To-Kitch-Er and the German Herder, what a distance ! 
Yet are they both prophets; and though one looks through 
nature with the pitch-jjine torch of the wilderness, and the other 
is lighted by a whole constellation of suns, yet have both 
learned, in their degree, that matter is only the time-garment of 
the spirit. The stammering utterance with which the Iowa seer 
reveals this, it were worth a kingdom to hear, if we could but 
borrow the souls of his tribe while they listen to his visions. 

It is a genial trait with the Indian tribes to recognise the 
•Great Spirit in every little child. They rarely refuse a child 
anything. When their revenge is most implacable, a little one 
is often sent to them, adorned with flowers and shells, and 
taught to lisp a prayer that the culprit may be forgiven; and 
such mediation is rarely without effect, even on the sternest 
warrior. This trait alone is sufficient to establish their 
relationship with Herder, Bichter, and other spirits of angel- 
stature. Nay, if we could look back a few centuries, we should 
find the ancestors of Shakspeare, and the fastidiously- refined 
Goethe, with painted cheeks, wolves' teeth for jewels, and boars' 
hides for garments. Perhaps the universe could not have 
l^assed before the vision of those star-like s^^irits, except 
through the forest life of such wild ancestry. 

Some theorists say that the human brain, in its formation, 
"changes with a steady rise, through a likeness to one animal 
and then another, till it is perfected in that of man, the highest 
minimal." It seems to be so with the nations in their progressive 



202 LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 

rise out of barbarism. I was never before so much struck with 
the animalism of Indian character, as I was in the frightful 
war-dance of these chiefs. Their gestures were as furious as 
wild-cats, they howled like wolves, screamed like prairie dogs, 
and tramped like buifaloes. Their faces were painted fiery red, 
or, with cross-bars of green and red, and they were decorated 
with all sorts of uncouth trappings of hair, bones, and teeth. 
That which regulated their movements, in lieu of music, was a 
discordant clash; and altogether they looked and acted more like 
demons from the pit, than anything human. It was the natural 
and appropriate language of war. The wolfish howl, and the 
wild -cat leap, represent it more truly than graceful evolutions, 
and the Marseilaise hymn. That music rises above mere brute 
vengeance; it breathes, in fervid ecstasy, the soul's aspiration 
after freedom — the struggle of will with fate. It is the future 
setting sail from old landings, and merrily piping all hands on 
board. Is it too noble a voice to belong to physical warfare ; 
the shrill howl of old Nan-Nouce-Fush-E-To, is good enough 
for such brutish work ; it clove the brain like a tomahawk, and 
was hot with hatred. 

In truth, that war-dance was terrific both to eye and ear. I 
looked at the door, to see if escape were easy, in case they 
really worked themselves up to the scalping point. For the 
first time, I fully conceived the sacrifices and perils of Puritan 
settlers. Heaven have mercy on the mother who heard those 
dreadful yells when they really foreboded murder! or who 
suddenly met such a group of grotesque demons in the loneliness 
of the forest ! 

But instantly I felt that I was wronging them in my thought. 
Through paint and feathers, I saw gleams of right honest and 
friendly expression; and I said, we are children of the same 
Father, seeking the same home. If the Puritans suffered from 
their savage hatred, it was because they met them with savage 
weapons, and a savage spirit. Then I thought of William 
Penn's treaty with the Indians; ''the only one ever formed 
without an oath, and the only one that was never broken." I 
thought of the deputation of Indians, who, some years ago, 
visited Philadelphia, and knelt with one spontaneous impulse 
round the monument of Penn. 

Again I looked at the yelling savages in their grim array, 
stamping through the war-dance, with a furious energy that 
made the floor shake, as by an earthquake; and I said. These, 



LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 203 

too, would bow, like little children, before the persuasive power 
of Christian love ! Alas, if we had but faith in this divine prin- 
ciple, wdiat mountains of evil might be removed into the depths 
of the sea. 

P. S. Alas, poor Do-Hum-Me is dead; so is No-See, Black 
Hawk's niece ; and several of the chiefs are indisposed. Sleep- 
ing by hot anthracite fires, and then exposed to the keen 
encounters of the wintry wind; one hour, half stifled in the 
close atmosphere of theatres and crowded saloons, and the next, 
driving through snowy streets and the midnight air; this is a 
process which kills civilised people by inches, but savages at a 
few strokes. 

Do-Hum-Me was but nineteen years old, in vigorous health, 
when I saw her a few days since, and obviously so happy in her 
newly wedded love, that it ran over at her expressive eyes, and 
mantled her handsome face like a veil of sunshine. Now she 
rests among the trees, in Greenwood Cemetery ! not the trees 
that whispered to her childhood. Her coffin was decorated 
according to Indian custom, and deposited with the ceremonies 
peculiar to her people. Alas, for the handsome one, how lonely 
she sleeps here! Far, far away from him, to whom her eye 
turned constantly, as the sunflower to the light ! 

Sick, and sad at heart, this noble band of warriors, with 
melancholy steps, left the pestilential city last week, for their 
own broad prairies in the West. Do-Hum-Me was the pride 
and idol of them all. The old Iowa chief, the head of the 
deputation, was her father; and notwithstanding the stoicism 
of Indian character, it is said that both he and the bereaved 
young husband were overwhelmed with an agony of grief They 
obviously loved each other most strongly. May the Great 
Spirit grant them a happy meeting in their "fair hunting 
grounds" beyond the sky. 



LETTER XXXYII. 

GREEN OLD AGE — SWEDENBORG AND FOURIER. 

March, 1843. 

When I began to write these letters, it was simply as a safety- 
valve for an expanding spirit, pent up like steam in a boiler. 
I told you they would be of every fashion, according to my chang- 



204 LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 

ing mood ; now a mere panorama of passing scenes, then child- 
like prattle about birds or mosses ; now a serious exposition of 
facts, for the reformer's use, and then the poet's path, on winged 
Pegasus, far up into the blue. 

To-day I know not what I shall write ; but I think I shall 
be ofi' to the sky ; for my spirit is in that mood when smiling 
faces peep through chinks in the clouds, and angel's fingers 
beckon and point upward. As I grow older, these glimpses 
into the spiritual become more and more clear, and all the 
visible stamps itself on my soul, a daguerreotype image of the 
invisible, written with sunbeams. 

I sometimes ask myself, Will it continue to be so *? For 
coming age casts its shadows before ; and the rarest of attain- 
ments is to grow old happily and gracefully. When I look 
around among the old people of my acquaintance, I am 
frightened to see how large a proportion are a burden to them- 
selves, and an annoyance to others. The joyfulness of youth 
excites in them no kindlier feeling than gloom, and lucky is it, 
if it does not encounter angry rebuke or supercilious contempt. 
The happiness of lovers has a still worse effect ; it frets them 
until they become like the man with a tooth-ache, whose irrita- 
tion impelled him to kick poor puss, because she was sleeping 
so comfortably on the hearthrug. 

If this state were an inevitable attendant upon advanced 
years, then indeed would long life be an unmitigated curse. 
But there is no such necessity imposed upon us. We make 
old age cheerless and morose, in the same way that we pervert 
all things ; and that is, by selfishness. We allow ourselves to 
think more of our own convenience and comfort, in little 
matters, than we do of the happiness and improvement of 
others ; and thus we lose the habit of sympathising with love 
and joy. I pray God to enable me to guard against this. May 
I be ever willing to promote the innocent pleasure of others, 
in their own way, even if it be not 7ny way. Selfishness can 
blight even the abundant blossoms of youth ; and if carried 
into age, it leaves the soul like a horse enclosed within an arid 
and stony field, with plenty of verdant pastures all around 
him. 

Childhood itself is scarcely more lovely than a cheerful, 
kind, sunshiny old age. 

"How I love the mellow sage, 
Smihng through the veil of age !" 



LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 205 

And whene'er this man of years 
In the dance of joy appears, 
Age is on his temples hung, 
But his heart — his heart is young ! " 

Here is tlie great secret of a bright and green old age. When 
Tithonus asked for an eternal life in the body, and found, to his 
sorrow, that immortal youth was not included in the bargain, 
it surely was because he forgot to ask the perpetual gift of loving 
and sympathising. 

Next to this, is an intense affection for nature, and for all 
simple things. A human heart can never grow old, if it 
takes a lively interest in the pairing of birds, the re-production 
of flowers, and the changing tints of autumn ferns. Nature, 
unlike other friends, has an exhaustless meaning, which one 
sees and hears more distinctly, the more they are enamoured of 
her. Blessed are they who hear it ; for through tones comes 
the most inward perceptions of the spirit. Into the ear of the 
soul, which reverently listens. Nature whispers, speaks, or 
warbles, most heavenly arcana. 

And even they who seek her only through science, receive a 
portion of her own tranquillity, and perpetual youth. The 
happiest old man I ever saw, was one who knew how the 
mason-bee builds his cell, and how every bird lines her nest ; 
who found pleasure in a sea-shore pebble, as boys do in new 
marbles ; and who placed every glittering mineral in a focus of 
light, under a kaleidescope of his own construction. The 
effect was like the imagined riches of fairy land ; and when an 
admiring group of happy young people gathered round it, the 
heart of the good old man leapt like the heart of a child. The 
laws of nature, as manifested in her infinitely various opera- 
tions, were to him a perennial fountain of delight ; and, like 
her, he offered the joy to all. Here was no admixture of the 
bad excitement attendant upon ambition or controversy ; but 
all was serenely happy, as are an angel's thoughts, or an infant's 
dreams. 

Age, in its outward senses, returns again to childhood ; and 
thus should it do spiritually. The little child enters a rich 
man's house, and loves to play with the things that are new 
and pretty ; but he thinks not of their market value, nor does 
he pride himself that another child cannot play with the same. 
The farmer's home will probably delight him more ; for he will 
love living squirrels better than marble greyhounds, and the 



206 LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 

merry bob-o'lincoln better than stuffed birds from Arabj the 
blest ; for they cannot sing into his heart. What he wants is 
life and love — the power of giving and receiving joy. To this 
estimate of things, wisdom returns, after the intuitions of child- 
hood are lost. Virtue is but innocence on a higher plane, to 
be attained only through severe conflict. Thus life completes 
its circle ; but it is a circle that rises while it revolves ; for tlie 
path of spirit is ever spiral, containing all of truth and love in 
each revolution, yet ever tending upward. The virtue which 
brings us back to innocence on a higher plane of wisdom, may 
be the childhood of another state of existence ; and through 
successive conflicts, we may again complete the ascending 
circle, and find it holiness. 

The ages, too, are rising spirally ; each containing all, yet 
ever ascending. Hence, all our new things are old, and yet 
they are new. Some truth known to the ancients meets us on 
a higher plane, and w^e do not recognise it, because it is like a 
child of earth, which has passed upward and become an angel. 
Nothing of true beauty ever passes away. The youth of the 
world, which Greece embodied in immortal marble, will return 
in the circlino- asjes, as innocence comes back in virtue ; but it 
shall return filled with a higher life ; and that, too, shall point 
upward. Thus shall the arts be glorified. Beethoven's music 
prophesies all this, and struggles after it continually ; there- 
fore, whosoever hears it (with the inward, as well as the out- 
ward ear), feels his soul spread its strong pinions, eager to pass 
"the flaming bounds of time and space," and circle all the 
infinite. 

It is a beautiful conception of Fourier's, that the Aurora 
Borealis is the Earth's aspiration after its glorious future ; and 
that when the moral and intellectual w^orld are brought into 
order by the right construction of society, these restless, flash- 
ing northern lights will settle into an intensely radiant circle 
round the poles, melt all the ice, and bring into existence new 
flowers of unknown beauty. 

Astronomers almost contemporary with Fourier, and pro- 
bably unacquainted with his theory of reconstructing society, 
have suggested the idea of progressive changes in the earth's 
motions, till her poles shall be brought into exact harmony 
with the poles of the heavens, and thus perpetual spring per- 
vade the whole earth. 

It is a singular fact, too, that the groups and series of 



LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 207 

Fourier's plan of society are in accordance with Swedenborg's 
description of the order in heaven. It is said that Fourier 
never read Swedenborg ; yet has he embodied his sjjiritual 
order in political economy, as perfectly as if he had been sent 
to answer the prayer, " Thy kingdom come on earth, as it is in 
heaven." 

Visions! idle visions! exclaims the man of mere facts. Very 
well, friend ; walk by the light of thy lantern, if it be sufficient 
for thee. I ask thee not to believe in these visions ; for 
peradventure thou canst not. But said I not truly that their 
faces smile through chinks in the clouds, and that their fingers 
beckon and point upward ] 



LETTER XXXVIII. 

THE SNOW-STORM — THE COLD-FOOTED, WARM-HEARTED LITTLE 

ONES. 

March 17, 1843. 

Here it is the 17th of March, and I was rejoicing that winter 
had but a fortnight longer to live, and imagination already 
began to stir its foot among last year's fallen leaves, in search 
of the hidden fragrant treasures of the trailing arbutus — when 
lo, there comes a snow-storm, the wildest and most beautiful of 
the season ! The snow-spirit has been abroad, careering on the 
wings of the wind, in the finest style imaginable ; throwing 
diamonds and ermine mantles around him with princely prodi- 
gality. 

I had wealth of fairy splendour on my windows this morn- 
ing. Alpine heights, cathedral spires, and glittering grottoes. 
It reminded me of the days of my youth, when on the sliores 
of the Kennebec I used to watch to see " the river go down," 
as the rafters expressed it. A magnificent spectacle it was, in 
those seasons when huge masses of ice were loosened by sud- 
den warmth, and came tumbling over the falls, to lie broken 
into a thousand fantastic shapes of beauty. Trees, mountains, 
turrets, spires, broken columns, went sailing along, glancing 
and glittering in the moonlight, like petrified Fata-jMorgana 
of Italian skies, with the rainbows frozen out. And here I had 
it painted in crystal, by the wild artist whom I heard at his 



208 



LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 



work in the night-time, between my dreams, as he went by 
with the whistling storm. 

"ISTature, dear Goddess," is so beautiful! always so beautiful I 
Every little flake of the snow is such a perfect crystal; and 
they fall together so gracefully, as if fairies of the air caught 
water-drops, and made them into artificial flowers to garland 
the wings of the wind! Oh, it is the saddest of all things, that 
even one human soul should dimly perceive the beauty that is 
ever around us, "sl perpetual benediction." Nature, that great 
missionary of the Most High, preaches to us for ever in all 
tones of love, and writes truth in all colours, on manuscripts 
illuminated with stars and flowers. But we are not in harmony 
with the whole, and so we understand her not. 

Here and there, a spirit less at discoid with Nature, hears 
semitones in the ocean and the wind, and when the stars look 
into his heart, he is stirred with dim recollections of a universal 
language, which would reveal all, if he only remembered the 
alphabet. " When one stands alone at night, amidst unfettered 
Nature," says Bettine, "it seems as though she were a spirit 
praying to man for release ! And should man set Nature free ? 
I must at some time reflect upon this; but I have already very 
often had this sensation, as if wailing Nature plaintively begged 
something of me; and it cut me to the heart, not to be alJe to 
understand what she would have. I must consider seriously 
of this ; perhaj)s I may yet discover something which shall 
raise us above this earthly life." 

"Well may Nature beg plaintively of man; for all that 
disturbs her harmony flows from his spirit. Age after age, she - 
has toiled patiently, manifesting in thunder and lightning, ^ 
tempest, and tornado, the evils which man produces, and thus 
striving to restore the equilibrium which he disturbs. Every- 
thing else seeks earnestly to live according to the laws of its 
being, and therefore each has individual excellence, the best 
adapted of all things to its purpose. Because Nature is earnest, 
spontaneous, and true, she is perfect. Art, though it makes a 
fair show, produces nothing perfect. Look through a powerful 
microscope at the finest cambric needle that ever was manu- 
factured, and it shall seem blunt as a crowbar; but apply the same 
test to the antennae of a beetle or a butterfly, and thou wilt see 
them taper to an invisible point. That man's best works 
should be such bungling imitations of Nature's infinite per- 
fection, matters not much ; but that he should make himself an 



LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 209 

iiaitation, tliis is the fact which Nature moans over, and 
deprecates beseechingly. Be spontaneous, be truthful, be free, 
and thus be individuals ! is the song she sings through warbling 
birds, and whispering pines, and roaring waves, and screeching 
winds. She wails and implores, because inaii keeps her in 
captivity, and he alone can set her free. To those Mdio rise 
al)Ove custom and tradition, and dare to trust their own wings 
UL^ver so little above the crowd, how eagerly does she throw 
her garland ladders to tempt them upwards ! How beautiful, 
how angelic, seems every fragment of life which is earnest and 
true! Every man can be really great, if he will only trust his 
own highest instincts, think his own thoughts, and say his own 
say. The stupidest fellow, if he would but reveal, with child- 
like honesty, how he feels, and what he thinks, when the stars 
wink at him, when he sees the ocean for the first time, when 
music comes over the waters, or when he and his beloved look 
into each other's eyes, — would he but reveal this, the world 
would hail him as a genius, in his way, and would prefer his 
story to all the epics that ever were written, from Homer to 
Scott. 

"The commonest m.ind is full of thought, some worthy of the rarest; 
And coulil it see them fairly writ, would wonder at its wealth." 

Nay, there is truth in the facetious assertion of Carlyle, that 
the dog, Avho sits looking at the moon so seriously, would 
doubtless be a poet, if he could but find a publisher. Of this 
thing be assured, no romance was ever so interesting, as would 
be a right comprehension of that dog's relation to the moon, 
and of the relation of both to all things, and of all things to 
thyself, and of thyself to God. Some glimmering of this 
mysterious relation of each to all may disturb the dog's mind 
with a strange solemnity, until he fancies he sees another dog 
in the moon and howls thereat. Could his howl be triinslated 
and published, it might teach us somewhat that the wisest has 
not yet conjectured. 

Let not the matter-of-fact reader imagine me to say that it is 
difficult for puppies to find publishers. The frothy sea of 
circulating literature would prove such assertion a most manifest 
falsehood. JSTor do I assert that puerile and common-place 
minds are diffident about makinof books. There is babbling 
more than enough ; but among it all, one finds little true speech, 
or true silence. The dullest mind has some beauty peculiarly 



210 LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 

its own; but it eclioes, and does not speak itself. It stiwes to 
write as schools have taught, as custom dictates, or as sects 
prescribe; and so it stammers, and makes no utterance. Nature 
made us individuals, as she did the flowers and the pebbles, 
but we are afraid to be peculiar, and so our society resembles 
a bag of marbles, or a string of mould candles. Why should 
we all dress after the same fashion? The frost never paints my 
windows tAvice alike. 

As I write, I look round for the sparkling tracery ; it is gone, 
and I shall never see a copy. Well, I will not mourn for this. 
The sunshine has its own glorious beauty, and my s])irit rejoices 
therein, even more than in the graceful pencillings of the snow. 
All kinds of beauty have I loved with fervent homage. Above 
all, do I worship it in its highest form; that of a sincere and 
loving soul. Even here in the city, amid bricks and mortar, 
and tilth and finery, I find it in all its manifestations, from the 
animal to the god-like. 

This morning, our pavements were spread witli jewelled 
ermine, more daintily prepared than the foot-cloth of an Eastern 
queen. But now the world has travelled through it, as it does 
through the heart of a politician, and every pure drift is mud- 
bespattered. But there is still the beauty of the bells, and 
the graceful little shell-like sleighs, and the swift motions. 
There is something exhilarating in the rapid whirl of life, abroad 
and joyous in New York, soon after a new-fallen snow. It 
excites somewhat of the triumphant emotion which one feels 
when riding a swift horse, or careering on the surging sea. It 
brings to my mind Lapland deer, and flashing Aurora, and 
moon-images in the sky, and those wonderful luminous snows, 
which clothe the whole landscape with phosphoric fire. 

But there is beauty here far beyond rich furs, and Russian 
chimes, and noble horses, or imagination of the glorious refrac- 
tions in arctic skies ; for here are human hearts, faithful and 
loving, amid the fiercest temptations ; still genial and cheerful, 
though surrounded by storm and blight. Two little ragged 
girls went by the window just now, their scanty garments 
fluttering in the wind ; but their little blue hands were locked 
in each other, and the elder tenderly lifted the younger through 
the snow-drift. It was but a short time ago, that I passed the 
same children in Broadway. One of them had rags bound 
round her feet, and a pair of broken shoes. The other was 
barefoot and she looked very red, for it was pinching cold. 



LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 211 

" Mary, " said the other, in a gentle voice, " sit dowji on the 
door-step, here, and I will take off my shoes. Yonr feet are 
cold, and you shall wear them the rest of the way. " " Just a 
little while, " replied the other ; " for they are very cold ; but 
you shall have them again directly. " They sat down and made 
the friendly exchange ; and away jumped the little one, her 
bare feet pattering on the cold stones, but glowing with a happy 
heart-warmth. 

You say I must make up such incidents, because you never 
see humanity under such winning aspects in the streets of jSTew 
York. Nay, my friend, I do not make up these stories ; but 
I look on this ever-moving panorama of life, as Coleridge de- 
scribes his Cupid : 

"What outward form and features are, 
He giiesseth but in part ; 
But what within is good and fair, 
He seeth with the heart." 



LETTER XXXIX. 

THE MINISTRATIONS OF SORROW. 

April 27, 1843. 

There is a fine engraving of Jean Paul Richter, surrounded 
by floating clouds, all of which are angels' faces ; but so soft 
and shadowy, that they must be sought for to be perceived. It 
was a beautiful idea thus to environ Jean Paul ; for whosoever 
reads him, with an earnest thoughtfulness, will see heavenly 
features perpetually shining through the golden mists or rolling 
vapour. 

But the picture interested me especially, because it embodied 
a great spiritual truth. In all clouds that surround the soul, 
there are angel faces, and we should see them if we were calm 
and holy. It is because we are impatient of our destiny, and 
do not understand its use in our eternal progression, that the 
clouds which envelope it seem like black masses of thunder, or 
cold and dismal obstructions of the sunshine. If man looked at 
his being as a whole, or had faith that all things were intended 
to bring him into harmony with the divine will, he would grate- 
fully acknowledge that spiritual dew and rain, wind and light- 



212 LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 

ning, cloud and sunshine, all help his growth, as their natural 
forms bring to maturity the flowers and the grain. " Whosoever 
quarrels with his fate, does not understand it," says Bettine ; 
and among all her inspired sayings she spake none wiser. 

Misfortune is never mournful to the soul that accepts it ; for 
such do always see that every cloud is an angel's face. Every 
man deems that he has precisely the trials and temptations 
which are the hardest of all others for him to bear ; but they 
are so, simply because they are the very ones he most needs. 

I admit the truth of Bulwer's assertion, that " long adversity 
usually leaves its prey somewhat chilled, and somewhat har- 
dened to affection ; passive and quiet of hope, resigned to the 
worst, as to the common order of events, and expecting little 
from the best, as an unlooked for incident in the regularity of 
human afflictions. " But I apprehend this remark is mainly 
applicable to pecuniary difficulties, which, " in all their wretched 
and entangling minutiae, like the diminutive cords by which 
Gulliver was bound, tame the strongest mind, and quell the 
most buoyant spirit." 

These vexations are not man's natural destiny, and therefore 
are not healthy for his soul. They are produced by a false 
structure of society, which daily sends thousands of kind and 
generous hearts down to ruin and despair, in its great whirl of 
falsity and wrong. These are victims of a stinging grief, which 
has in it nothing divine, and brings no healing on its wings. 

But the sorrow which God appoints is purifying and ennob- 
ling, and contains within it a serious joy. Our Father saw that 
disappointment and separation were necessary, and he has made 
them holy and elevating. From the sepulchre the stone is 
rolled away, and angels declare to the mourner, " He is not 
here ; he is risen. Why seek the living among the dead V 
And a voice higher than the angels, proclaims, "Because I live, 
ye shall live also." 

" There is no death to those who know of life ; 
No time to those who see eternity." 

Blessed indeed are the ministrations of sorrow ! Through it, 
we are brought into more tender relationship) to all other forms 
of being, obtain a deeper insight into the mystery of eternal life, 
and feel more distinctly the breathings of the infinite. "All 
sorrow raises us above the civic, ceremonial law, and makes the 
prosaist a psalmist," says Jean Paul. 

Whatsoever is hi[jhest and holiest is tinered with melancholv. 



LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 213 

The eye of genius has always a plaintive expression, and its 
natural language is pathos. A prophet is sadder than other 
men ; and He who is greater than all prophets, was " a man 
of sorrows, and acquainted with grief. " 

Sorrow connects the soul with the invisible and the everlast- 
ing ; and therefore all things prophesy it, before it comes to us. 
The babe weeps at the wail of music, though he is a stranger 
to grief; and joyful young hearts are saddened by the solemn 
brightness of the moon. When men try to explain the oppres- 
sive feelings inspired by moonlight and the ever silent stars, 
they say it is as if spirits were near. Thus Bettine writes to 
Gunderode : " In the night was something confidential, which 
allured me as a child ; and before I ever heard of spirits, it 
seemed as if there was something living near me, in whose pro- 
tection I trusted. So was it with me on the balcony, when a 
child three or four years old, when all the bells were tolling for 
the Emperor's death. As it always grew more nightly and 
cool, and nobody with me, it seemed as if the air was full of 
bell-chimes, which surrounded me ; then came a gloom over 
my little heart, and then again sudden comjiosure, as if my 
guardian angel had taken me in his arms. What a great mys- 
tery is life, so closely embracing the soul, as the chrysalis the 
butterfly ! " 

The spiritual speaks ever to us, but we hear it at such mo- 
ments, because the soul is silent, and listening, and therefore 
the infinite pervades it. — All alone, alone, through deep sha- 
dows, thus only can ye pass to golden sunshine on the eternal 
shore ! this is the prophetic voice, whose sad but holy utterance 
goes deep down into the soul when it is alone with moonlight 
and stars. Under its unearthly influence, childhood nestles 
closer to its mother's side, and the mirthful heart of youth melts 
into tears. It is as if the cross upreared its dark shadow before 
the vision of the infant Saviour. 

As we grow older, this prophecy becomes experience. By 
the hand of sorrow, the finite is rolled away like a scroll, and 
we stand consciously in the presence of the infinite and the 
eternal. The wailing of the autumn wind, the lone stubble 
waving in the wintry field, the falling foliage, and the starry 
stillness, are no longer a luxury of sadness, as in the days of 
youthful imagination. The voice of wailing has been within 
us ; our loved ones have left us, and we are like the lone stub- 
ble in the once blooming field ; the leaves of our hopes are fall- 



214 LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 

ing withered around us, and tlie midniglit stillness is filled with 
dreary echoes of the past. 

Oh, Father, how fearful is this pilgrimage ! Alone in the 
twilight, and voices from the earth, the air, and the sky, call, 
''Whence art thou? — Whither goest thou?" And none makes 
answer. Behind us comes the voice of the past, like the echo 
of a bell, travelling through space for a thousand years ; and all 
it utters, is, "As thou art, I was." Before us stands the 
future, a shadow robed in vapour, with a far-off sunlight shining 
through. The present is around us — passing away — passing 
away. And we 1 Oh, Father ! fearful indeed is this earth's 
pilgrimage, when the soul has learned that all its sounds are 
echoes — all its sights are shadows. 

But lo ! the clouds open, and a face serene and hojoeful looks 
forth, and says, Be thou as a little child, and thus shalt thou 
become a seraph. The shadow^s which perplex thee are all 
realities ; the echoes are all from the eternal voice which gave 
to light its being. All the changing forms around thee are but 
images of the infinite and the true, seen in the mirror of time, 
as they pass by, each on a heavenly mission. Be thou as a 
little child. Thy Father's hand will guide thee home. 

I bow my head in silent humility. I cannot pray that afflic- 
tions may not visit me. I know why it was that Mrs Fletcher 
said, — " Such prayers never seem to have wings." I am will- 
ing to be purified through sorrow, and to accept it meekly, as 
a blessing. I see that all the clouds are angels' faces, and 
their voices speak harmoniously of the everlasting chime. 



LETTER XL. 

MAY-DAY IN NEW YORK THE STORKS OF NUREMBERG ALL 

NATIONS ARE BRETHREN. 

May 1, 1843. 

The first of May ! — how the phrase is twined all round with 
violets, and clumps of the small Husitania (which remind me 
of a " Sylvania phalanx" of babies), and slight anemones, nod- 
ding gracefully as blooming maidens, under the old moss-grown 
trees ! How it brings up visions of fair yoimg floral queens, 
and garlanded May-poles, and door-posts wreathed with flowers, 



LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 215 

and juvenile choirs hymning the return of the swallows, in the 
uncient time ! The old French word Mes, signifies a garden ; 
and in Lorraine, Mai still has that meaning ; from which, per- 
haps, the word maiden. In Brittany, Mae signifies green, flour- 
ishing ; the Dutch Mooy, means beautiful, agreeable ; the Swed- 
ish Mio is small, pretty and pleasant ; and the East India Maya, 
is Goddess of Nature. Thus have men shown their love of this 
genial month, by connecting its name with images of youth and 
loveliness. 

In our climate, it happens frequently that " Winter linger- 
ing, chills the lap of May," and we are often tantalised with 
promises unfulfilled. But though our Northern Indians named 
June " the month of flowers," yet with all her abundant beauty, 
I doubt whether she commends herself to the heart like May, 
with her scanty love tokens from the grave of the frosty past. 
They are like infancy, like resurrection, like everything new 
and fresh, and full of hopefulness and promise. 

The first, and the last ! Ah, in all human things, how does 
one idea follow the other, like its shadow ! The circling year 
oppresses me with its fulness of meaning. Youth, manhood, 
and old age, are its most external significance. It is symbolical 
of things far deeper, as every soul knows that is travelling 
over steep hills, and through quiet valleys, unto the palace called 
Beautiful, like Bunyan's w^orld-renowned Pilgrim. Human 
life, in its forever-repeating circle, like nature, in her perpetual 
self- restoring beauty, tells us that from the burial-place of Win- 
ter, young Spring shall come forth to preach resurrection ; and 
thus it must be in the outward and symbolical, because thus it 
is in the inward, spiritual progression of the soul. 

"Two children ia two neighbour villages, 
Playing mad pranks along the heathy lees ; 
Two strangers meeting at a festival ; 
Two lovers whispering by an orchard wall ; 
Two lives bound fast in one, with golden ease ; 
Two graves grass-green beside a gray church-tower, 
Washed with still rains, and daisy-blossomed ; 
Two children in one hamlet born and bred; 
So runs the round of life from hour to hour." 

Blessings on the Spring-time, when Nature stands like young 
children hand in hand, in proi:)hecy of future marriage. 

May-day in New York, is the saddest thing, to one who has 
been used to hunting mooses by the brook, and paddling in its 
w^aters. Brick walls, instead of budding trees, and rattling 



216 LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 

wheels in lieu of singing birds, are bad enough ; but to make 
the matter worse, all New York moves on the first of May ; 
not only moves about, as usual in the everlasting hurry-scurry 
of business, but one house empties itself into another, all over 
the city. The streets are full of loaded drays, on which tables 
are dancing, and carpets rolling to and fro. Small chairs, 
which bring up such pretty, cosy images of rolly-polly manni- 
kins and maidens, eating supper from tilted porringers, and 
spilling the milk on their night gowns — these go rickettiug 
along on the tops of beds and bureaus, and not unfrequently 
pitch into the street, and so fall asunder. 

Children are driving hither and yon, one with a flower-pot in 
his hand, another with work-box, hand-box, or oil canakin ; 
each so intent upon his important mission that all the world 
seems to him (as it does to many a theologian) safely locked up 
within the little walls he carries. Luckily, both boy and 
bigot are mistaken, or mankind would be in a very bad box, 
sure enouo'h. The doofs seem bewildered with this universal 
transmigration of bodies ; and as for the cats, they sit on the 
door steps, mewing piteously, that they were not born in the 
middle ages, or at least, in the quiet old portion of the world. 
And I, who have almost as strong a love of localities as poor 
puss, turn away from the windows, with a suppressed anathema 
on the nineteenth century, with its perpetual changes. Do you 
want an appropriate emblem of this country, and this age 1 
Then stand on tlie side walks of New York, and watch the uni- 
versal transit on the first of May. The facility and speed with 
which our people change politics, and move from sect to sect, 
and from theory to theory, is comparatively slow and moss- 
grown ; unless, indeed, one excepts the Rev. O. A. Brownson, 
who seems to stay in any spiritual habitation a much shorter 
time than the New Yorkers do in their houses. It is the cus- 
tom here, for those who move out, to leave the accumulated 
dust and dirt of the year, for them who enter to clear up. I 
apprehend it is somewhat so with all the ecclesiastical and civil 
establishments, which have so long been let out to tenants in 
rotation. Those who enter them, must make a great sweeping 
and scrubbing, if they would have a clean residence. 

That peo^^le should move so often in this city, is generally a 
matter of their own volition. Aspirations after the infinite, 
lead them to perpetual change, in the restless hope of finding 
something better and better still. But they would not raise 



LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 217 

the price of clrays, and subject themselves to great inconveni- 
ence, by moving all on one day, were it not that the law com- 
pels everybody who intends to move at all, to quit his premises 
before twelve o'clock on May morning. Failing to do this, the 
police will put him and his goods into the street, where they 
will fare much like a boy beside an upset hornet's nest. The 
object of this regulation is, to have the Directory for the year 
arranged with accuracy. For, as theologians, and some re- 
formers, can perceive no higher mission for human souls, than 
to arrange themselves rank and file iii sectarian platoons, 
so the civil authorities do not apprehend that a citizen has any 
more important object for living, just at this season, than to 
have his name set in a well ordered Directory. 

However, human beings are such creatures of habit and imi- 
tation, that what is necessity soon becomes fashion, and each 
one wishes to do what everybody else is doing. A lady in the 
neighbourhood closed all her blinds and shutters, on May-day ; 
being asked by her acquaintance whether she had been in the 
country, she answered, ''I was ashamed not to be moving on 
the first of May ; and so I shut up the house that the neigh- 
bours might not know it." One could not well imagine a fact 
more characteristic of the despotic sway of custom and public 
opinion, in the United States, and the nineteenth century. 
Elias Hicks' remark, that it " takes live fish to swim up stream," 
is emphatically true of this age and country, in which liberty- 
caps abound, but no one is allowed to wear them. 

I am by temperament averse to frequent changes, either in 
my spiritual or material abodes. I think I was made for a 
German ; and that my soul in coming down to earth, got drifted 
away by some side-wind, and so was wafted into the United 
States, to take up its abode in New York. Jean Paul speak- 
ing of the quiet habits of the Germans, says he does not believe 
they turn in their beds so often as the French do. Oh, for one 
of those old German homes, where the same stork, with his 
children and grand-children, builds on the same roof, generation 
after generation ; where each family knows its own particular 
stork, and each stork knows the family from all the w^orld be- 
side. Oh, for a quiet nook in good old Nuremberg, where still 
flourishes the lime-trees, planted seven hundred years ago, by 
Empress Cunegunde : where the same family inhabits the same 
mansion for five centuries ; where cards are still sold in the 
same house where cards were first manufactured ; and where 



218 LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 

the great-grandson makes watches in the same shop that was 
occupied by his watch-making great-grandfather. 

But after all, this is a foolish, whining complaint. A stork's 
nest is very 2^^®^^sant, but there are better things. Man is 
moving to his highest destiny through manifold revolutions of 
spirit ; and the outward must change with the inward. 

It is selfish and unwise to quarrel with this spiritual truth 
or its ultimate results, however inconvenient they may be. 
The old fisherman, who would have exterminated steam-boats, 
because they frightened the fish away from the waters where 
he had baited them for years, was by no means profound in his 
social views, or of expansive benevolence. 

If the w^orld were filled with different tribes of ISTurembergers, 
with their storks, what strangers should we brethren of the 
human household be to each other ! Thanks to Carlyle, who 
has brought England and America into such close companion- 
ship with the mind of Germany. Thanks to Mary Howitt, 
who has introduced Frederica Bremer into our homes, like a 
sunbeam of spring, and thus changed Sweden from a snowy ab- 
straction to a beautiful and healthy reality. It is so pleasant 
to look into the hearts and eyes of those ISTorthern brothers ! 
To be conveyed to their firesides by a j^rocess so much swifter 
than steam ! 

Do you fear that the patriot will be lost in the cosmopolite 1 
Never fear. We shall not love our own household less, because 
we love others more. In the beautiful words of Frederika : 
" The human heart is like Heaven ; the more angels, the more 
room." 



LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 

SECOND SERIES. 



LETTER I. 

Dec. 25, 1843 



'} 



To-day is Christmas. For several days past, cartloads of 
evergreens have gone by my windows, the pure snow falling on 
them, soft and still as a blessing. To-day, churches are wreathed 
in evergreen, altars are illuminated, and the bells sound joyfully 
in Gloria Excelsis, Throngs of worshippers are going up to their 
altars, in the Greek, Syrian, Armenian, Roman and English 
churches. Eighteen hundred years ago, a poor babe was born 
in a stable, and a few lonely sheiDlierds heard heavenly voices, 
soft warbling over the moonlit hills, proclaiming " Peace on 
earth, and good-will towards men." Earth made no response 
to the chorus. It always entertains angels unawares. When 
the Holy One came, they mocked and crucified him. But now 
the stars, in their midnight course, listen to millions of human 
voices, and deep organ tones struggle upward, vainly striving to 
exjiress the hopes and aspirations, which that advent concentra- 
ted from the past, and prophesied for the future. From East 
to West, from North to South, men chant hymns of praise to 
the despised Nazarene, and kneel in w^orship before his cross. 
How beautiful is this universal homage to the Principle of 
Love — that feminine principle of the universe, the inmost centre 
of Christianity. It is the divine idea which distinguishes it from 
ail other religions, and yet the idea in which Christian nations 
evince so little faith, that one would think they kept only to 
swear by, that Gospel which says, " Swear not at all." 

Centuries have passed, and through infinite conflict have 
" ushered in our brief to-day ;" and is there peace and good-will 
among: men "? Sincere faith in the words of Jesus would soon 



220 LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 

fulfil the propliecj wliicli angels sung. But the world persists 
in saying, " This doctrine of unqualified forgiveness and perfect 
love, though beautiful and holy, cannot be carried into practice 
now ; men are not yet prepared for it," As if slavery ever 
could fit men for freedom, or war ever lead the nations into 
peace ! Yet men who gravely utter these excuses, laugh at 
the shallow wit of that timid mother, who declared that her 
son should never venture into the water till he had learned to 
swim. 

Those who have dared to trust the principles of peace, have 
always found them perfectly safe. It can never prove other- 
wise, if such a course is the result of Christian principle, and a 
deep friendliness for humanity. Who seemed so little likely to 
understand such a position as the Indians of North America 1 
Yet how readily they laid down tomahawks and scalping-knives 
at the feet of William Penn ! With what humble sorrow they 
apologised for killing the only two Quakers they were ever 
known to attack ! "The men carried arms," said they, " and 
therefore we did not know they were not fighters. We thought 
they pretended to be Quakers, because they were cowards." 
The savages of the East, who murdered Lyman and Munson, 
made the same excuse. " They carried arms," said they, " and 
so we supposed they were not Christian missionaries, but ene- 
mies. We would have done them no harm, if we had known 
they were men of God." 

If a nation could but attain to such high wisdom as to abjure 
war, and proclaim to all the earth, " We will not fight, under 
any provocation ; if other nations have aught against us, we will 
settle the question by umpires mutually chosen," think you that 
any nation would dare to make war upon such a people 1 Nay, 
verily, they would be instinctively ashamed of such an act, as 
men are now ashamed to attack a woman or a child. Even if 
any were found mean enough to pursue such a course, the whole 
civilised world would cry "fy!" upon them, and by universal 
consent, brand them as poltroons and assassins. And assassins 
they would be, even in the common acceptation of the term. 

I have somewhere read of a regiment ordered to march into 
a small town and take it. I think it was in the Tyrol ; but 
wherever it was, it chanced that the place was settled by a col- 
ony who believed the Gospel of Christ, and proved their faith 
by works. A courier from a neighbouring village informed 
them that troops were advancing to take the town. They quietly 






LETTERS FROM XEW YORK. 221 

answered, " If they will take it, they must." Soldiers soon 
came riding in, with colours flying and fifes piping their shrill 
defiance. They looked round for an enemy, and saw the farmer 
at his plough, the blacksmith at his anvil, and the women at their 
churns and spinning-wheels. Babies crowed to hear the music, 
and boys ran out to see the ])retty trainers, with feathers and 
bright buttons, " the harlequins of the nineteenth century." Of 
course, none of these were in a proper position to be shot at. 
"Where are your soldiers'?" they asked. "We have none," 
was the brief reply. " But we have come to take the town." 
" Well, friends, it lies before you." " But is there nobody here 
to fight]" " No ; we are all Christians." 

Here was an emergency altogether unprovided for ; a sort of 
resistance which no bullet could hit ; a fortress perfectly bomb- 
proof. The commander of the military force was perplexed. 
" If there is nobody to fight with, of course we cannot 
fight," said he. " It is impossible to take such a town as this." 
So he ordered the horses' heads to be turned about, and they 
carried the human animals out of the village, as guiltless as they 
entered, and perchance somewhat wiser. 

This experiment on a small scale, indicates how easy it would 
be to dispense with armies and navies, if men only had faith in 
the religion they profess to believe. When France lately re- 
duced her army, England immediately did the same ; for the 
existence of one army creates the necessity for another, unless 
men are safely ensconced in the bomb-proof fortress above- 
mentioned. 

The doctrines of Jesus are not beautiful abstractions, but liv- 
inof vital truths. There is in them no elaborate calculation of 

o 

consequences, but simply the Divine impulse uttered. They 
are few and simple, but of infinite power in spirit, and of 
universal application. In all conceivable moral propositions, 
they stand like the algebraic X for the unknown quantity, 
and if consulted aright, always give the true answer. The 
I world has been deluged with arguments about wai", slavery, 
&c., and the wisest product of them all is simply an enlight- 
ened application of the maxims of Jesus. Faith in God, love to 
man, and action obedient thereto, from these flow all that belong 
to order, peace, and progress. Probably, the laws by which the 
universe was made are thus reducible to three in one, and all 
varieties of creation are thence unfolded, as all melody and har- 
mony flow from three primal notes. God works sympatheti- 



222 LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 

cally. The divine idea goes forth and clothes itself in form, from 
which all the infinity of forms are evolved. We mortals sec 
truth in fragments and try to trace it upward to its origin, by 
painful analysis. In this there is no growth. All creation, all 
life, is evolved by the opposite process. We must reverence 
truth. We must have that faith in it, of which action is the 
appropriate form ; and, lo the progress, which we have sought 
for so painfully, will unfold upon us, as naturally as the seed 
expands into blossoms and fruit. 

I did not mean to preach a sermon. But the evergreens, and 
the music from neighbouring churches, carried me back to the 
hill-sides of Palestine, and my spirit involuntarily began to ask 
— What response does earth now give to that chorus of peace 
and good will 1 

It matters little that Christ was not born on that day, which 
the church has chosen to commemorate his birth. The associa- 
tions twined round it for many centuries have consecrated it to 
my mind. Nor am I indifferent to the fact that it was the old 
. Homan festival for the Birth of the Sun. As a form of their 
religious idea it is interesting to me ; and I see peculiar beauty 
in thus identifying the birth of the natural sun with the advent 
of the Sun of Bighteousness, which, in an infinitely higher sense, 
enlightens and vivifies the nations. The learned argue that 
Christ was probably born in the spring ; because the Jewish 
people were at that season enrolled for taxation, and this was 
the business which carried Joseph and Mary to Bethlehem, 
and because the shepherds of Syria would not be watching their 
flocks in the open air, during the cold months. To these 
reasons, Swedenborgians would add another ; for, according to 
the Doctrine of Correspondence, unfolded by their " illuminated 
scribe," Spring corresponds to Peace; that diapason note, from 
which all growth rises in harmonious order. 

But I am willing to accept the wintry anniversary of Christ- 
mas, and take it to my heart. As the sun is now born anew, 
and his power begins to wax, instead of waning, so may the 
Truth and Love, which his Light and Heat typifies, gradually 
irradiate and warm our understanding and affections. 

Prederika Bremer gives the following delightful picture of 
this Christian festival in the cold regions of the North :-^" Not 
alone in the houses of the wealthy blaze up fires of joy, and are 
heard the glad shouts of children. Prom the humblest cottages 
also resounds joy ; in the prisons it becomes bright, and the 



LETTERS FllOM NEW YORK. 223 

poor partake of plenty. In the country, doors, hearths and 
tables, stand open to every wanderer. In many parts of Nor- 
way, the innkeeper demands no payment from the traveller, 
either for board or lodijinfj. This is the time in which the earth 
seems to feel the truth of the heavenly words, ' It is more 
blessed to give than to receive.' And not only human beings, 
but animals also have their good things at Christmas. All do- 
mestic animals are entertained in the best manner ; and the 
little birds of heaven rejoice too ; for at every barn, a tall stake 
raises itself, on the top of which rich sheaves of oats invite them 
to a magnificent meal. Even the poorest day-labourer, if he 
himself possess no corn, asks and receives from the peasant a 
bundle of grain, raises it aloft, and makes the birds rejoice be- 
side his empty barn." 

The Romans kept their festival of the Sun with social feasts 
and mutual gifts ; and the windows of New- York are to-day 
filled with ail forms of luxury and splendour, to tempt the 
wealthy, who are making up Christmas boxes for family and 
friends. Many are the rich jewels and shining stuffs, this day 
bestowed by affection or vanity. In this I have no share ; but if 
I were as rich as John Jacob Astor I would this day go to the shop 
of Baronto, a poor Italian artiste, in Orchard-street, buy all he 
has, and give freely to every one who enjoys forms of beauty. 
There are hidden in that small obscure workshop some little 
gems of art. Alabaster nymphs, antique urns of agate, and Hebe 
vases of the costly Yerd de Prato. There is something that moves 
me strangely in those old Grecian forms. They stand like pet- 
rified melodies from the world's youthful heart. I would like 
to buy out Baronto every Christmas, and mix those "fair hu- 
manities of old religion" with the Madonnas and Saviours of 
a more spiritual time. 

A friend of mine who has no money to spend for jewels, or 
silks, or even antique vases, has employed his Christmas more 
wisely than this ; and in his actions there is more angelic 
music, than in those divine old statues. He filled a large 
basket full of cakes, and went forth into our most miserable 
streets, to distribute them among hungry children. How little 
dirty faces peeped after him, round street corners, and laughed 
from behind open gates ! How their eyes sparkled, as they 
led along some shivering barefooted urchin, and cried out — 
" This little boy has had no cake, sir !" Sometimes a greedy 
lad would get two shares by false pretences ; but this was no 



224 LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 

conclusive proof of total depravity, in children who never ate 
cake from Christmas to Christmas. No wonder the stranger 
with his basket excited a prodigious sensation. Mothers came 
to see who it was that had been so kind to their little ones. 
Every one had a story to tell of health ruined by hard work, 
of sickly children, or drunken husbands. It was a genuine 
outpouring of hearts. An honest son of the Emerald Isle 
stood by, rubbing his head, and exclaimed, " Did my eyes ever 
see the like o' that '? A jintleman giving cakes to folks he 
don't know, and never asking a bit o' money for the same ! " 

Alas, eighteen centuries ago, that chorus of good will was 
sung, and yet so simple an act of sympathising kindness 
astonishes the poor. 

In the course of his Christmas rambles, my friend entered a 
house occupied by fifteen families. In the corner of one room, 
on a heap of rags, lay a woman with a babe three days old, 
without food or fire. In another very small apartment was an 
aged weather-beaten woman. She pointed to an old basket of 
pins and tape, as she said, '' For sixteen years I have carried 
that basket on my arm, through the streets of New York; and 
often have I come home with weary feet, without money 
enough to buy my supper. But we must always pay our rent 
in advance, whether we have a loaf of bread to eat, or not." 
Seeing the bed without clothing, the visitor inquired how she 
slept. " Oh the house is very leaky. The wind whistles 
through and through, and the rain and snow come driving in. 
When any of us are sick, or the weather is extra cold, we lend 
our bedding, and some of us sit up while others get a nap." 
As she spoke, a ragged little girl came in to say, '' Mammy 
wants to know whether you will lend her your forkT' '' To 
be sure, I will, dear," she replied, in the heartiest tone imagin- 
able. She would have been less generous had her fork been a 
silver one. Her visitor smiled as he said, " I suppose you 
borrow your neighbour's knife in return for your fork 1" *' Oh 
yes," she replied, ''and she is as willing to lend as I am. We 
poor folks must help one another. It is all the comfort we 
have." The kind-hearted creature did not know, perhaps, that 
it was precisely such comfort as the angels have in Heaven ; 
only theirs is without the drawback of physical sufiering and 
limited means. 

I have said that these families, owning a knife and fork 
between them, and loaning their bed-clothes after a day of toil. 



LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 225 

were always compelled to pay their rent in advance. Upon 
adding together tlie sums paid by each for accommodations so 
wretched, it was found that the income from this dilapidated 
building, in a filthy and crowded street, was greater than the 
rent of many a princely mansion in Broadway. This mode of 
oppressing the poor is a crying sin in our city. A benevolent 
rich man could not make a better investment of capital, than 
to build tenements for the labouring class, and let them on 
reasonable terms. 

This Christmas tour of observation, has suggested to my 
mind many thoughts concerning the present relations of labour 
and capital. But I forbear; for I see that this path, like every 
other, " if you do but follow it, leads to the end of the world." 
I had rather dwell on the perpetual eftbrt of divine Providence, 
to equalise what the selfishness of man strives to make unequal. 

If the poor have fewer pleasures than the rich, they enjoy 
them more keenly ; if they have not that consideration in 
society which brings with it so many advantages, they avoid 
the irksome slavery of conventional forms ; and what exer- 
cise of the benevolent sympathies could a rich man enjoy, 
in making the most magnificent Christmas gift, compared 
with the beautiful self-denial which lends its last blanket 
that another may sleep 1 That there should exist the 
necessity for such sacrifices, what does it say to us concerning 
the structure of society, on this Christmas day, nearly two 
thousand years after the advent of Him who said, " God is 
your Father, and all ye are brethren 1 " 



LETTER 11. 

December 28, 1843. 

I HAVE twice heard Ole Bui. I scarcely dare to tell the im- 
pression his music made upon me. But, casting aside all fear 
of ridicule for excessive enthusiasm, I will say that it expressed 
to me more of the infinite, than I ever saw, or heard, or 
dreamed of, in the realms of Nature, Art, or Imagination. 

They tell me his performance is wonderfully skilful ; but I 
have not enough of scientific knowledge to judge of the 
difficulties he overcomes. I can readily believe of him, what 
Bettina says of Beethoven, that " his spirit creates the incon- 
ceivable, and his fingers perform the impossible." He played on 



226 LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 

four strings at once, and produced the rich harmony of four 
instruments. His bow touched the strings as if in sport, and 
brought forth light leaps of sound, with electric rapidity, yet 
clear in their distinctness. He made his violin sing with flute- 
like voice, and accompany itself with a guitar, which came in 
ever and anon like big drops of musical rain. All this I felt, 
as well as heard, without the slightest knowledge of qioartetto 
or staccato. How he did it, I know as little as I know how 
the sun shines, or the spring brings forth its blossoms. I only 
know that music came from his soul into mine, and carried it 
iipward to worship with the angels. 

Oh, the exquisite delicacy of those notes ! Now tripping 
and fairy-like, as the song of Ariel ; now soft and low, as the 
breath of a sleeping babe, yet clear as a fine-toned bell ; now 
high, as a lark soaring upward, till lost among the stars ! 

Noble families sometimes double their names, to distinguish 
themselves from collateral branches of inferior rank. I have 
doubled his, and in memory of the Persian nightingale have 
named him Ole Bulbul. 

Immediately after a deep, impassioned, plaintive melody, an 
Adagio of his own composing, which uttered the soft low breath- 
ing of a Mother's Prayer, rising to the very agony of supplication, 
a voice in the crowd called for Yankee Doodle. It shocked 
me like Harlequin tumbling on the altar of a temple. I had 
no idea that he would comply with what seemed to me the 
absurd request. But, smiling, he drew the bow across his vio- 
lin, and our national tune rose on the air, transfigu.red in a veil 
of glorious variations. It was Yankee Doodle in a state of 
clairvoyance. A wonderful proof of how the most common and 
trivial may be exalted by the influx of the infinite. 

When urged to join the throng who were following this 
Star of the North, I coolly replied, "I never like lions; more- 
over, I am too ignorant of musical science to appreciate his skill." 
But when I heard this man, I at once recognised a power 
that transcends science, and which mere skill may toil after in 
vain. I had no need of knowledge to feel this subtle influence, 
any more than I needed to study optics to perceive the beauty 
of the rainbow. It overcame me like a miracle. I felt that 
my soul was for the first time, baptized in music; that my 
spiritual relations were somehow changed by it, and that I 
sliould henceforth be otherwise than I had been. I was so 
oppressed with "the exceeding weight of glory," that I drew 



LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 227 

my breath with difficulty. As I came out of the building, the 
street sounds hurt me with their harshness. The sight of 
ragged boys and importunate coachmen jarred more than ever 
on my feelings. I wanted that the angels that had ministered 
to my spirit should attune theirs also. It seemed to me as 
if such music should bring all the world into the harmonious 
beauty of divine order. I passed by my earthly home, and 
knew it not. My spirit seemed to be floating through infinite 
space. The next day I felt like a person who had been in a 
trance, seen heaven opened, and then returned to earth again. 

This doubtless appears very excessive in one who has passed 
the enthusiasm of youth, with a frame too healthy and sub- 
stantial to be conscious of nerves, and with a mind instinctively 
oj)posed to lion-worship. In truth, it seems wonderful to my- 
self; but so it was. Like a romantic girl of sixteen, I would 
pick up the broken string of his violin, and wear it as a relic, 
with a half superstitious feeling that some mysterious magic of 
melody lay hidden therein. 

I know not whether others were as powerfully wrought upon 
as myself; for my whole being passed into my ear, and the 
faces around me were invisible. But the exceeding stillness 
showed that the spirits of the multitude bowed down before 
the magician. While he was playing, the rustling of a leaf 
might have been heard; and when he closed, the tremendous 
bursts of applause told how the hearts of thousands leaped up 
like one. 

His personal appearance increases .the charm. He looks 
pure, natural, and vigorous, as I imagine Adam in Paradise. 
His inspired soul dwells in a strong frame, of admirable propor- 
tions, and looks out intensely from his earnest eyes. Whatever 
may be his theological opinions, the religious sentiment must 
be strong in his nature; for Teutonic reverence, mingled with 
impassioned aspiration, shines through his honest ^Northern 
face, and runs through all his music. I speak of him as he 
appears while he and his violin converse together. When not 
playing, there is nothing observable in his appearance, except 
genuine health, the unconscious calmness of strength in re230se, 
and the most unaflected sim})licity of dress and manner. But 
when he takes his violin, and holds it so caressingly to his ear, 
to catch the faint vibration of its strings, it seems as if "the 
angels were whisjjering to him." As his fingers sweep across 
the strings, the angels pass into his soul, give him their tones, 



228 LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 

and look out from his eyes, with the wondrous beauty of in- 
spiration. His motions sway to the music, like a tree in the 
winds; for soul and body chord. In fact, "his soul is but a 
harp, which an infinite breath modulates; his senses are but 
strings, which weave the passing air into rhythm and cadence." 

If it be true, as has been said, that a person ignorant of the 
rules of music, who gives himself up to its influence, without 
knowing whence it comes, or whither it goes, experiences, more 
than the scientific, the passionate joy of the composer himself, 
in his moments of inspiration, then was I blest in my ignorance. 
While I listened, music was to my soul what the atmosphere 
is to my body, it was the breath of my inward life. I felt, 
more deeply than ever, that music is the highest symbol of the 
infinite and holy. I heard it moan plaintively over the discords 
of society, and the dimmed beauty of humanity. It filled me 
with inexpressible longing to see man at one with Nature and 
with God; and it thrilled me with joyful prophecy that the 
hope would pass into glorious fulfilment. 

With renewed force I felt what I have often said, that the 
secret of creation lay in music. "A voice to light gave being." 
Sound led the stars into their places, and taught chemical 
affinities to waltz into each other's arms. 

" By one pervading spirit 
Of tones and numbers all things are controlled ; 
As sages taught, where faith was found." 

Music is the soprano, the feminine principle, the heart of 
the universe. Because it is the voice of Love, — because it is 
the highest type, and aggregate expression of passional attrac- 
tion, therefore it is infinite; therefore it pervades all space, and 
transcends all being, like a divine influx. What the tone is 
to the word, what expression is to the form, what affection is 
to thought, what the heart is to the head, what intuition is to 
argument, what insight is to policy, what religion is to phil- 
osophy, what holiness is to heroism, what moral influence is 
to power, what woman is to man — is music to the universe. 
Flexile, graceful, and free, it pervades all things, and is limited 
by none. It is not Poetry, but the soul of poetry; it is not 
mathematics, but it is in numbers, like harmonious proportions 
in cast iron; it is not painting, but it shines through colours, 
and gives them their tone ; it is not dancing, but it makes all 
gracefulness of motion; it is not architecture, but the stones 
take their places in harmony with its voice, and stand in 



LETTERS FllOM NEW YORK. 229 

*' petrified music." In the words of Bettina — "Every art is 
the body of music, which is the soul of every art; and so is 
music, too, the soul of love, which also answers not for its work- 
ing; for it is the contact of divine with human." 

But I must return from this flight among the stars, to Ole 
Bulbul's violin; and the distance between the two is not so 
great as it appears. 

Some, who never like to admit that the greatest stands before 
them, say that Paganini played the Carnival of Venice better 
than his Norwegian rival. I know not. But if ever laughter 
ran along the chords of musical instrument with a wilder joy, 
if ever tones quarrelled with more delightful dissonance, if ever 
violin frolicked with more capricious grace, than Ole Bulbul's, 
in that fantastic whirl of melody, I envy the ears that heard it. 

The orchestra was from Park theatre, the best in the city, 
and their overtures were in themselves a rich treat. But it 
seemed to me as if they were sometimes lost in a maze. I 
fancied, once or twice, that the electric brilliancy of his perform- 
ance bewildered them; that "panting time toiled after him in 
vain." I should indeed suppose that it w^as as easy to play an 
accompaniment to the Aurora Borealis, as to this Norwegian 
genius. 

Ole Bui was educated for the ministry, but afterward 
studied law, and was admitted to the bar. In Italy, the 
star of his fame first rose resplendent. It is said he was at 
Bologna, trying, under depressing circumstances, to compose a 
piece of music, when Madame Rossini chanced to pass by his 
apartment, and her attention was at once arrested by the fasci- 
nating sounds. The director of the Philharmonic Society was 
in distress, in consequence of the failure of a promise from De 
Beriot and IMalibran. Madame Rossini informed him of the 
treasure she had discovered. Ole Bulbul was received with 
great eclat, and from that time has played to overflowing houses, 
in the principal cities of France, Italy, Switzerhmd, Germany, 
Russia, Sweden, Norway and England. He comes to the 
New World, because genius craves the sympathy of the uni- 
verse, and delights to pour itself abroad like the sunbeams. 
His reception in New- York has exceeded all preceding stars. 
His first audience were beside themselves with delight, and the 
orchestra threw down their instruments in estatic wonder. 
Familiarity Avith his performance brings less excitement, but I 
think more pleasure. 



230 LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 



LETTER III. 

January 1st, 1844. 

To-day is the first of the month, which receives its name from 
Janus, the two-faced god, who looks before and backward, and 
is therefore a fitting emblem of this season of retrospection and 
hope. For myself, I have passed so many of these mile-stones, 
on my pilgrimage, that I would fain forget their recurrence, if 
I could ; but in New- York I am not allowed to be oblivious. 
Last night one could hear nothing but merry glees and snatches 
of comic songs, as if a hundred theatres had emptied themselves 
into the street. 

The watchmen were out in double force — a precaution which 
is deemed necessary to preserve public peace on this noisy an- 
niversary. The notorious Calithumpian Band are by these 
means kept within bounds. In former years they played all 
manner of mischievous 'tricks — such as taking down the sign of 
a cabbage from a provision shop and nailing it over a tailor's 
door ; putting "Cotfin Warehouse" on the doctor's walls; "Turn- 
ing done here," or " Soft Soap for Sale," on the doors of politi- 
cians ; '' Brimstone, "Wholesale or Retail," on certain meeting 
houses, &c. These pranks became so annoying that the police 
were required to put a stop to them. This redoubtable band 
fired volleys over the grave of the departed year last night, and 
marched in the new monarch with fife and drum. Being ac- 
companied throughout their route by a formidable troup of 
watchmen, they caroused within bounds ; but the watch-houses 
this morning doubtless exhibited some funny scenes. This is 
a somewhat melancholy way of being happy ; no very great 
improvement upon old Silenus, with his troop of bacchanals 
and satyrs. 

In London, they welcome the New- Year with a merry peal 
of bells from all the steeples ; but the most beautiful custom 
prevails in Germany. An orchestra of thirty or forty of the 
best musicians go up into the steeple of the highest church, and 
perform some grand symphony. Imagine what it would be to 
hear Haydn or Beethoven poured forth on the midnight air, 
from the church of St. Michael's, in Hamburg, whioh is 480 
feet high ! The glorious tones flow down, softened by the dis- 
tance, as if they floated over the silvery Rhine by moonlight. 



LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 231 

: of 
inspired lines 



I never think of it without being reminded of Longfellow's 



"And from the sky serene and far, 
A voice fell, like a falling star, 
Excelsior." 

I find it not easy to come away from that steeple-harmony 
to this city of turmoil and traffic. I will refresh myself with 
a vision of beauty, and she shall lead me back. Our merchants 
think that those graceful beings, who 

"Had their haunts by dale or piny mountain, 
Or forest, by slow stream, or pebbly spring," 

have all vanished, long ago. But Nature is filled with spirits, 
as it was in the old Grecian time. One of them dwells in our 
midst, and scatters blessings like a goddess. This lovely nymph, 
for years uncounted, reclined in the verdant fields, exchanging 
glances with the stars, which saw themselves in her deep blue 
eyes. In true transcendental style, she reposed quietly in the 
sunshine, watching the heavens reflect themselves in her full 
urn. Sometimes the little birds drank therefrom, and looked 
upward, or the Indian disturbed her placid mirror for a moment 
with his birchen cup. Thus ages f)assed, and the beautiful 
nymph gazed ever iipward, and held her mirror to the heavens. 
But the Spirit Avhich pervades all forms was changing — chang- 
ing ; and it whispered to the nymph, " Why liest thou here 
all the day idle 1 The birds only sip from thy full urn, while 
thousands of human beings suffer for what thou hast to spare." 
Then the nymph held communion with the sun, and he an- 
swered, " I give unto all without stint or measure, and yet my 
storehouse is full, as at the beginning." She looked at Iieaven, 
and saw written among the stars, " Lo, I embrace all, and thy 
urn is but a fragment of the great mirror, in which I reveal 
myself to all." 

Then the nymph felt heaving aspirations at her heart ; and 
she said, " I too would be like the sunshine, and the bright 
blue heaven." A voice from the infinite replied, " He that 
giveth receiveth. Let thine urn pour forth forever, and it shall 
be forever full." 

Then the water leaped joyfully, and went on its mission of 
love. Concealed, like good deeds, it went all over the city, and 
baptized in the name of Purity, Temperance, and Health. It 
flowed in the midst of pollution and filth, but kept itself un- 



232 LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 

mixed and undefiled, lilce Arethusa in her pathway through the 
sea — like a pure and loving heart visiting the abodes of wretch- 
edness and sin. The children sport with its thousand rills ; the 
poor invoke blessings on the urn whence such treasures flow ; 
and when the old enemy Fire puts forth his forked tongue, the 
nymph throws her veil over him, and hissing, he goes out from, 
her presence. Yet the urn fails not, but overflows evermore. 
And since the nymph has changed repose for action, and 
self-contemplation for bounteous outgiving, she has received 

"A very shower 
Of beauty for her earthly dower." 

She stands before us a perpetual Fountain of beauty and joy, 
wearing the sunlight for diamonds, and the rainbow for her 
mantle. This magnificent vision of herself, as a veiled Water- 
Spirit, is her princely gift to the soul of man ; and who can tell 
what changes may be wrought therewith 1 

Her name, Crotona, hath the old Grecian sound ; but greater 
is her glory than Callirhoe or Arethusa, or ^gle, the fairest of 
the Naiades ; for Crotona manifests the idea of an age on which 
rests the golden shadow of an approaching millennium — that 
equal difiiision is the only wealth, and working for others is the 
only joy. 

Are you curious to know what conjured up this fair vision to 
my mind ? On New Year's night, a fire broke out in a narrow 
and crowded street. It was soon extinguished, and on that occa- 
sion alone the insurance companies estimate that at least a million 
of dollars' worth of property was saved by Croton water. Fires, 
once so terrific in this city, are now mere trifles. The alarms 
are not more than one to six, compared to former years. This 
indicates that a large proportion was the work of incendiaries, 
who have small motive to pursue their vocation, now that the 
flames can be so easily extinguished. Reflecting on these bless- 
ings, I thought how the old Greeks would have worshipped 
Crotona, and what a fair statue they would have chisselled from 
their Pentelic marble. But after all, what had they so beauti- 
ful as our Maid of the Mist ? 

The money saved, will, to some of your readers, be the most 
interesting fact in connection with Crotona : for there are men, 
who, even in the sound of Ole Bulbul's violin could recognise 
nothing more than the effect of horse hair passing across tight- 
ened strings. For the benefit of such, I wish I could have 



LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 233 

counted all the wliite kid gloves abroad in tlie street to-day. 
It would have been an interesting item in the statistics of trade, 
and moreover would have served as a census of all the gentle- 
men who make any pretensions to gentility. 

The New Year's show in the windows was exceedingly beau- 
tiful this year. The shawls are of richer colours, the feathers 
more delicately tinged, the jewellery, cutlery, and crockery, are 
of more tasteful patterns. I look with interest on these con- 
tinually progressive improvements, because they seem to me 
significant of a more perfect state of society than we liave yet 
known. The outward is preparing itself for the advancing idea 
of the age, as a bride adorns herself for her husband. 

The efibrts to diminish drunkenness, the earnestness with 
which men inquire how crime can be prevented, poverty abol- 
ished and slavery swept from the face of a loathing earth — all 
these, and kindred reforms, have a more intimate connection 
with the tendency to perfection in manufactures and arts, than 
appears on the surface : for these are always forms of the ideas 
of an age. The world has not yet seen such architecture, or 
heard such music, as it will see and hear, when brute force 
yields to moral influence, and the brotherhood of man is uni- 
versally acknowledged. 



LETTEK IV. 

January 14th, 1844. 

Are you among those who have transient but vivid impressions, 
which seem like recollections of an anterior state of existence 1 
The experience of my friends is very dissimilar in this matter. 
Some do not comprehend what the question means, and shrink 
from it, as from an indication of insanity. Others at once con- 
fess that such vague impressions have puzzled them from child- 
hood. If not universal, they are at least peculiar to no age or 
nation. The Egyptians believed that men were spirits fallen 
from a brighter world ; that a Genius stood at the entrance of 
mortal life, with a Lethean cup in his hand, and gave to every 
soul a deep oblivious draught, from which they awoke with re- 
collections so confused that they mistook gleams of the past for 



234 LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 

a liglit from tlie future, calling memory hope, and experience 

prophecy. 

"Glimpses of glory ne'er forgot, 
That tell, like gleams on a snnset sea, 
What once has been, what now is not, 
But, what again shall brightly be," 

Plato considered the human soul as a wandering' exile from 
the orb of light, and its infinite aspirations as shadowy recollec- 
tions of its radiant home. Througfli all succeedino^ time this 
idea has been re-uttered in poetry and allegory. Wordsworth 
says : 

* ' Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting ; 
The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star, 
Hath had elsewhere its setting. 
And Cometh from afar." 

"Have ye not confessed to a feeling, a consciousness strange and vague, 
That ye have gone this way before, and walk again your daily life? 
Tracking an old routine, and on some foreign strand, 
Where bodily ye have never stood, finding your own footsteps ? 
Hath not at times some recent friend looked out an old familiar? 
Some newest circumstance, or place, teemed as with ancient memories? 
A startling sudden flash lighteth up all for an instant, [hiig-" 

And then it is quenched in darkness, and leaveth the cold spirit tremb- 

Some people are vaguely impressed with the idea of having- 
previously been some other individual, or of having formerly 
belonged to some peculiar nation, or era of the world. 
Mr Borrow, in his interesting book called The Zincali, or 
Gipsies of Spain, tells us that he could remember no time 
when the mere mention of a gipsy did not awaken indescrib- 
ably strange and pleasant feelings in his mind. This impulse 
led him to spend years with that singular people, and to iden- 
tify himself completely with their feelings, tastes, and habits of 
life. The gipsies accounted for it, by the supposition that the 
soul which animated his body had, at some former time, ten- 
anted that of one of their own tribe. 

Perhaps this dim consciousness, impressed on the human 
mind in such various ways, is merely a result of the fact that 
every human being is a reproduction of all that has gone before 
him, and therefore his soul is filled with echoes from their mul- 
tiplied voices. Or it may be that the spiritual world, in which 
we are all unconsciously living, while we abide in the material 
world, is more thinly veiled from some souls than others. Per- 
haps some dwell habitually near the mysterious boundary-line 
of clairvoyance. 



LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 235 

Whatever may be the explanation, T know full well that long 
before I heard of the Egyptian cup, or Plato's theory, I was 
often haunted with a bewildering consciovisness of having lived 
somewhere before I lived here. After comparing notes on the 
subject with a friend, one evening, I wrote the following story, 
fantastic, but not without signiticance, and called it 

THE REMEMBERED HOME. 

A child lay sleeping by the sea-shore. The tide was coming 
in so fast, that the foam of the great waves already dashed near 
the feet of the sleeping one. A white gull came riding thither 
on the top of a huge wave. He flew high up in the air, and 
screamed as he flew. 

Whereat the sleeper awoke, and looked around him. The 
place was wild and lonely ; but the red, round sun was rising 
up out of the ocean, and as the sea-nymphs danced up to meet 
him, the points of their diamond crowns glittered among the 
green billows. 

" Where am I V said the child. He rubbed his eyes, and 
looked all around with wonder. " How came I here f he said : 
" This is not my home !" 

Suddenly, he heard soft sweet voices. They came from above 
his head, and the caves of the rocks echoed them. 

Then he remembered that he was a King's son, and had once 
lived in a glorious palace. How had he wandered thence 1 
Had gipsies stolen him, as he slept in his golden cradle 1 Those 
soft, sweet voices sounded like old times. " I heard them in 
my Father's house," said he; "O, I wish they would sing to me 
again." 

In the simplicity of his little heart, he thought some one 
among the rocks sung in reply to the voices in the air. He 
crept into a cave, and asked, " Where is my home 1 Ye that 
sing here so sweetly the song of my Father's house, can ye tell 
me where is my home 1" 

The waves dashed loud against the rocks, but there was no 
other sound ; only, as he ceased to speak, echo, with hollow 
tones, answered, " Home." 

" Where is my home ?' he cried, with passionate eagerness ; 
— and echo again answered, " Home." 

Afraid of the loneliness, and of the mocking sounds, the child 
crept out of the cave, and came into the morning sunshine. 



236 LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 

He walked on and on, and it seemed to him as if the smooth, 
hard beach would have no end. The great waves, as they came 
tumbling and roaring at his feet, seemed to speak into his heart, 
with a deep loud voice, " Home ! Home !" 

Then the tears rolled down his cheeks ; for he felt as if he 
were wandering alone in a strange place. 

As he went along, crying bitterly, he met a lame old woman, 
who said to him sharply, " Well, John, where have you been 1 
A fine piece of work is this, for you to walk in your sleejD, and so 
be whimpering by the sea-shore at break of day 1 I must tie 
you to the bedstead ; and then all the walking you do, you 
must do in your dreams." 

The boy looked timidly at her, as she took him by the hand ; 
and he wondered within himself if she w^ere the gipsy that 
had stolen him. Then he remembered the melodious voices, 
and the echoes in the cave, and how the great thundering waves 
seemed to speak into his heart. 

" Why don't you talk T said the old woman ; " I should 
think you would be glad to go home." 

The boy answered, '- It sometimes seems to me as if I once 
lived in a beautiful palace, and as if the hut where we are going 
were not my home." 

" That comes of walking in your sleep," said the old woman : 
^' These are dreams. Come home, and go to work ; for dream- 
ing will get you no breakfast." 

So the little boy went to her hut ; and when he had milked 
the cow, and drawn the water, and split wood for the oven, she 
made ready for him a nice breakfast. She was very good to 
him, according to her ways ; and when he had done his work, 
she was always willing he should run in the fields to play with 
other children. 

Gradually he forgot the voices in the air, and the echoes in 
the cave, until it seemed to him he had always lived in the old 
woman's hut. 

But, a long, long time after, it chanced that the cow rambled 
from her pasture, and John was sent to find her. 

He wandered far into a deep, thick wood ; and there, by the 
side of a running brook, in the midst of white shining birch 
stems, that stood thick around, like slender columns of silver, 
the old cow was lying on the grass, with her feet folded under 
her, peacefully chewing her cud. The full, clear moon shone 
on the brook, and as the waters went rippling along over the 



LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 237" 

stones, it seemed as if the inoon were broken in pieces, and 
every little wavelet were scampering off with a single fragment. 

The thoughtful lad looked at the moon, fast tending to the 
West ; he looked at her image in the brook ; and he listened 
to the deep silence of the woods. The same sweet voices, that 
he had heard before, seemed to come from the brook ; and the 
notes they sung were like snatches of an old familiar tune. 
Again, he remembered, but more dimly than before, that he 
had once lived in a glorious palace, full of light and music. 

He stood leaning against a birch tree, and looked, with earn- 
est thoughtful love, at a pale evening primrose, which grew by 
the brink of a rivulet. 

By degrees the flower raised itself, and assumed the look 
of a tall graceful girl, playfully dipping her feet in the water, 
Then the heart of the youth was right joyful ! He sprang 
forward, exclaiming, ''Oh, it is long, long years since we parted. 
Do you remember how I tried to kiss your image in the great 
crystal mirror in my father's palace? and how provoked I was,, 
that ever, as I tried to kiss your image, I kissed myself? How 
glad I am to see you again! Will you lead me to our home?" 

The tall primrose waved her yellow blossoms in the evening 
air, and made no answer. The youth stood amazed. Where 
had the maiden vanished? Whence did she come! What 
meant these recollections of a far-off home? 

In the deep solitude around, it seemed as if all things tried 
to tell him, if he could but understand their language. 

Slowly and sadly he returned to his hut, driving the cow 
before him. 

The night was beautiful, but solemn; for all was dusky light,, 
and star-stillness. The lone traveller gazed at the silent sky 
with earnest glances, and still his busy heart repeated the 
question, "Where is my home? Where is the beautiful 
maiden ? " 

It seemed as if the stars might tell him, if they would; but 
the stars passed into his heart and found no voice. 

For a long, long time, he remembered this scene with strange 
distinctness. At early dawn, at evening twilight, in the deep 
woods, and by the sounding shore, he thought of those soft, 
sweet voices, and the beantiful maiden. His heart desired to 
hear and see them again with inexpressible longings. 

At last, after weary months, he met them thus: he rose 
before the sun one bright May morning, and went forth to 



238 LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 

gather violets for the chikh'en. In the field before him, he saw 
a beautiful child, with white garments and golden hair. He 
called to her, ''Little one, you will take cold in the damp grass, 
with that thin dress ! " But the child turned round laughing, 
and threw flowers at his head. As he came nearer to her, he 
perceived that she had thin, transparent wings of lovely purple ; 
and sometimes she went skimming along the grass, and some- 
times she sailed round his head, tossing flowers in his face, and 
singing, 

' ' Follow, follow, follow me ! 

Follow me by rock and tree ! 

Ever toward the rising sun, 

Follow, follow, lonely one ! 

Where thy home is thou shalt know — 

But long the path, the journey slow. 

Follow, follow, follow me ! 

Follow me by rock and tree ! 

Ever toward the rising sun, 

Follow, follow, lonely one." 

Thus she went on singing and dancing, and sailing in the air. 
Sometimes she ran before him silently; but if he questioned 
her, she skimmed swiftly away, as if she were skating on ice; 
and he could only see the shining of her white garments among 
the trees in the distance. She would wait till he came near, 
and then begin to sing, 

"Follow, follow, follow me!" 

In this way she led him to the top of a high mountain, and 
then flew away far up into the sky, and so out of sight. The 
youth gazed upward till he could no longer see the waving of 
her garments, or the glittering of her wings. "Oh, would that 
I, too, could fly!" he exclaimed. He looked down upon the 
broad green fields and the winding river, that lay at his feet 
like emeralds set in silver; and the world seemed more lonely 
than ever. He leaned his head upon his hand and sighed. 
Suddenly he heard a tuneful voice; and it sang the same notes 
that puzzled him on the sea-shore. He turned quickly round, 
and the beautiful maid of the primrose stood before him ! 

Blushing deeply, and trembling with delight, he arose and 
said, "A pleasant May morning to you, fair maiden! Will 
you tell me your name 1 " With modest and simple frankness, 
she replied, "Thanks, for this friendly greeting. My name is 
Mary; and my father is Joseph, the miller. You can see our 



LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 239 

mill, if you look where the brook goes rushing down the sides 
of the mountain." 

"Now this is passing strange," thought he ; " did I not see 
this very girl rise out of a primrose, by the side of the 
birchen brook ] Is she not, moreover, the very one, whose 
image I tried to kiss in my father's mirror?" But he kept 
these thoughts to himself, fearing she would again disappear. 
He said aloud, "You are abroad early this morning fair maiden." 

She replied, "I came hither for a rare blue flower, that my 
little sister dearly loves. It grows only on the mountain top, 
as if it liked to live near the sky. See, my basket is nearly 
filled with flowers; but I have not found our favourite blue-eye 
yet." 

The youth eagerly inquired of what flower she was in 
search; and never was he so pleased, as when he found a group 
of them nodding under the warm shelter of a rock. They 
rambled over the mountain, till the basket and the maiden's 
apron were filled with flowers; and then slowly they went 
down to the cottage by the mill. The good mother came to the 
door, with clean white cap, and silken kerchief folded over 
her bosom. The youth saluted her respectfully, and she, with 
Avarm, friendly heart, asked him to come in and share their 
breakfast. As he ate of their fresh honey and cakes of sweet 
meal, it seemed as if he had known them for years. 

"I do not remember the faces of the old miller and his wife," 
said he within himself; "but as for that sweet Mary, with her 
large blue eyes and golden hair, I certainly saw her in my 
father's mirror." 

From that day he went very often to the mill by the mountain 
stream. And as he and Mary stood arm in arm, watching the 
pure white foam, as it went tumbling and sparkling over the 
wheels of the mill, or looking up, with large still thoughts, into 
the silent sky, he was often j)uzzled to know whether his 
companion was an earthly maiden, an angel, or a fairy. Her 
voice was so like the voices heard on the sea-shore ; and she so 
often sung snatches of songs that seemed like familiar music 
long forgotten. Still more remarkable was the deep exjjression 
of her gentle eyes, which he said looked like the tones of his 
father's voice. Then that marvellous vision of the primrose by 
the brook ; and the fair child, with shining wings, who first 
guided him -^to his Mary. Even the blue flowers he gathered 
on the mountain top perplexed him, like things seen in a 



240 LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 

dream. And though the beautiful girl assured him she was 
Mary, the miller's daughter, she at times confessed that she, 
too, seemed to remember a far-oflf radiant home, and, in her 
dreams heard voices singing, 

"Ever toward the rising sun, 
Follow, follow, lonely one!" 

Then, the maiden really seemed to have fairy gifts ; for, in the 
darkest night and the cloudiest day, wheresoever the youth saw 
her, a warm and mellow gleam, like sunlight, shone all round 
her. Ever since he had known her, the stars seemed to look, 
like mild eyes, into his heart ; and when he was thinking of 
her, things inanimate found a voice, and spoke to him of that 
far-off glorious home. Once she plucked a rose, and gave it to 
him ; and ever after, even when the leaves were withered, 
•whenever he looked at it, a smiling face came out from the 
centre, with gentle, earnest eyes, and golden hair, and, in soft 
sweet tones, said, " Kemember Mary !" 

They often talked together of these things ; and one day the 
youth said, " What hinders us, dear Mary, that we do not set 
out on a pilgrimage in search of our lost home 1 " 

With a smile, she answered, " Perhaps it will be our Father's 
will that I shall go before. If I do, will you not dream you 
hear my voice singing, 

"Follow, follow, lonely one"? 

Her words made the youth sad in his heart. "I should never 
find the way, without you,^' he said; and, as he clasped her 
hand, the warm tears fell on it. 

Seven days after that, he went to see his Mary; and the 
sorrowing mother told him the Angel of Death had been at the 
mill. Her darling one had gone to the spirit-land. 

When that fair body was laid in the ground, John covered 
the place with the blue mountain flowers, and there he sat and 
wept. The good mother spoke words of comfort; but he heard 
her not. Soothing voices breathed in the evening air; but he 
arose and stamped on the ground, and tore his hair, and scream- 
ed, " Sing me these songs no longer ! I have no home. They 
are all lies — lies that ye utter. Has not Mary gone away for- 
ever, even as the vision of the primrose vanished into thin air? 
Find some other dreaming fool to listen to your song!" 

A grieved and moaning sound was heard, and died away 
slowly — slowly, in the distance. 



LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 241 

The youth rushed clown from the mountain, and roamed 
sullenly by the sea-shore. Although it was broad sunshine, 
the sky looked dark, and there was no light upon the earth. 
The pleasant birds were gone ; crows cawed in the air ; and the 
wagons creaked more harshly, since Mary died. 

All at once, a tall figure, with a brass trumpet in his hand, 
walked up and blew a loud l)last in his ear. 

'*In the name of the Furies, what did you that for?' exclaimed 
the angry youth. 

"Pray excuse me, sir," replied the figure, bowing low, "you 
seem to be creeping along in a gloomy way here. Men say you 
are in search of a lost home. Just see what a wondrous balloon 
I'll prepare for you!'' 

Ho put his trumpet to the edge of the sea, and blowing 
strongly, a large, beautiful bubble sailed upward. 

"There's a travelling equipage!" exclaimed the trumpeter. 
"Spring on that, and you may ride to Jupiter, or Saturn, if you 
choose." 

The youth jumped astride the babble. It went bobbing 
hither and thither, as the wind carried it; and if it seemed 
likely to fall, the stranger blew lustily on his trumpet, and sent 
it aloft again. It kept very near the earth ; but the giddy 
youth thought he was up in the blue ; and he felt great contempt 
for the pigmies that walked on the ground. 

By and bye, other figures came up beside him, riding on 
bubbles. This irritated him, and he tried to kick them out of 
the way. 

At last, up came a monkey riding on a bubble, fiddling with 
all his might; and the trumpeter blew stoutly to keep him aloft. 

Then came a Chinese juggler, dancing on a bubble, and toss- 
ing about five ivory balls the while. — The blasts from the brass 
trumpet came so thick and strong, that he and the monkey kept 
close alongside the youth. 

At this, he exclaimed sharply, "A pretty sight are you 
two, jigging about on soap babbles, in that ridiculous fashion ! 
Is it possible you are such fools as to think you imitate me, 
sailing on a rainbow? " 

"Is it a rainbow you call it, sir?' said the monkey, with a 
grin: "it's nothing on earth but a bubble!" 

This made him so angry, that he tried to knock them both 
down; but the juggler hit him on the forehead with one of his 
ivory balls, and he tumbled dovvn senseless on the beach. 

Q 



242 LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 

When he came to himself, he was lying in a cave, on a bed 
of sea-weed. A beautiful airy figure stood before him, with a 
garment of transparent silver gauze, through which her grace- 
ful form was visible. She held him a goblet of wine, and, twir- 
ling herself round like an opera dancer, began to sing : 

"Follow me, follow me, 
To the caves of the sea 
Where beauty is glowing, 

And bright wine is flowing ! 
Follow me, follow me, 
To the caves of the sea." 

" I will follow thee to the end of the world, beautiful 
stranger 1 " exclaimed the youth. 

He tried to rise, but he grew dizzy, and leaned against a 
rock to recover his strength. As he leaned, a withered rose 
fell from his bosom. When he took it up, a lovely face, with 
golden locks, and sad earnest eyes, looked out from it, and said 
in loAv, plaintive tones, " Kemember Mary !" 

He kissed it devoutly, then turned to look at the gay, danc- 
ing stranger. But lo ! her beautiful face was twisted into a 
resemblance of a monkey. She grinned, as she said, " It's 
nothing but a bubble ! " and so, with awkward hops, went 
tumbling down on four feet, into the hidden recesses of the 
cave. 

The youth again kissed his precious rose. The mild, earnest 
eyes smiled upon him, and the lips said, " Why seek you not 
your Mary, and your home 1 " 

" It is — it must be so !" he exclaimed. "I have a glorious 
home ; and I will seek for it." 

He went forth from the cave. The landscape looked bright, 
the air was balmy, and the never-ceasing song of the sea 
had in it some bass notes of the old familiar tune. 

The youth rememembered how Mary had repeated to him, 

" Ever toward the rising sun. 
Follow, follow, lonely one ! " 

So he gathered his garments around him, and turned toward 
the East. But presently he heard a cracked, shrill voice be- 
hind him, calling, " Halloo ! halloo ! there ! " 

Turning, he saw a thin, wrinkled old man with a sharp vis- 
age, and a tight little mouth. He stood in an enormously 
large nautilus shell, as big as a boat, and full of gold. He 
beckoned so earnestly, that the youth went back. 



LETTERS FROM XEW YORK. 243 

" Stranger, I want your help," said the little old man, in 
-coaxing tones. ^' I know where are piles and piles of gold like 
this. If you will help me get it, you shall have half of it ; and 
that will make you richer than a king's son, I can tell you." 

The youth was tempted by the offer, and promised to enter 
the old man's service. 

A moaning sound, like sad wind-music was heard in the 
distance ; but it passed away, and he heeded it not. 

He went to work with the old man ; and they dug in dark 
caves, month after month, and year after year. He had 
scarcely time to glance at the bright heavens and the floweiy 
earth. His withered rose lay neglected in his chest, and all 
recollection of his home had passed away. 

His chief amusement was to pile up golden coins. He said 
to himself, '' When I have a hundred thousand jiiles, each six 
feet high, I will build a palace of ivory, and all the floors shall 
be of pearl, inlaid with gold doubloons. My twelve milk- 
white horses shall have harnesses of pure gold, covered with 
seed pearl. Oh, then I shall be perfectly happy !" 

So he digged and heaped, and digged and heaped, till he had 
} tiled up a hundred thousand pillars, each six feet high. 

Pie of the brass trumpet blew loud blasts, proclaiming to all 
wayfarers that here dwelt a man richer than Croesus. All 
men touched their hats to him. Even the Chinese juggler laid 
his forehead to the ground as he passed. 

But all at once, the coins behaved in the oddest fashion. 
From many of them there suddenly grew out wings, so that 
they looked liked golden beetles of a new and ungainly shape. 
They flew away, like a swarm of bees, and went skirling through 
the air, klip ! klap ! klip ! klap ! clickety, click ! 

Then the sharp-face little old man, who first decoyed him in- 
to the boat, tittered and laughed to see folks run after the 
flying gold. The trumpeter laid down his trumpet ; said he 
had a pain in his side, and should go into a consumption if he 
blew any more. 

John resolved to lock up the rest of his coins, lest they, too, 
should fly away. But the piles all timibled to ashes beneatli 
his touch. The people round him all said they were certainly 
gold. He tried to believe them; but when he took up a coin, 
he saw nothing but ashes. 

As he meditated on this, one of the flying pieces alighted on 
the table, and began to dance a rigadoon. It tumbled over 



244 LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 

and over, and presently sprang up in the form of a monkey, 
with a face like the wrinkled old man of the boat. He turned 
a somerset in the air, and then came up with a dollar on his 
nose, singing, with an ugly grim, " It's nothing on earth but a 
bubble!" 

Provoked beyond endurance, he seized a large stick and 
would have killed the beast ; but a venerable man, with silver- 
white hair and a bland countenance, held back his arm, and 
said, " Harm not the poor animal ; but rather do him good." 

John covered his face and wept, as he said, "All things are 
bubbles ! They told me I should be like a king's son, if I 
heaped up this accursed gold, that now gibes, and gibbers, and 
mocks at me ! " 

"And wast thou not a king's son in the beginning 1" said 
the old man, with solemn tenderness. " What could the caves 
of the earth add to wealth like thine *?" 

Then was the wanderer strangely moved, and his thoughts 
were perplexed within him ; for there was something in that 
old man's clear, mild eye, that reminded him of his beloved 
Mary, and the blue flowers on the mountain top. 

With a troubled voice he murmured, " The sea and the 
earth, the mountains and the stars all lie to me." 

" Not the mountains and the stars, my son," replied the old 
man. " But look ! thy enemy is hungry." 

The rich man turned, and saw the Chinese juggler in rags, 
leading a half starved monkey. His heart was softened, and 
he took gold and gave him, and said, " Buy food for him and 
thee, and come to me again." But the gold that he gave re- 
turned into his own hand, though thej/ carried it away with 
thankful hearts ; and as he laid it upon the table, he found that 
that, and that only, changed not to ashes ; it remained pure, 
solid gold. 

The white-haired old man smiled, and said, " All is not a 

bubble. 

That thou keepest thou losest, 
That thou givest thou hast. 

Wilt thou follow me to thy Father's house 1" 

He said this persuadingly ; and he that heard, again believed, 
and turned his face toward the East. " Shall I carry nothing 
with me 1" he inquired. "Thy withered rose, and the gold 
thou gavest to thy enemy," replied the venerable guide. 

Before they had proceeded far, the trumpeter and the old 



LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 245 

man hallooed after them, and the siren of the cave sang her 
song. 

But they kept bravely on, ever toward the mountain in the 
East. The flowers grew thicker in their path, and sent up 
their fragrant breath, an offering of love. In the trees seemed 
to be a multitude of harps ; and unseen hands played the old 
familiar tunes. 

When they reached the top of the mountain, John turned to 
speak to that kind old man, with solemn, friendly voice ; but 
the child with white raiment and shining wings stood before 
him. She carried in her arms long wreaths of the most beauti- 
ful flowers ; and as she danced round and round him, she twined 
them playfully about his limbs, singing — 

" Ever toward the rising sun, 
Follow, follow, lonely one. 
Loud sound the notes of lofty cheer, 
Be strong of heart — thy Home is near !" 

But presently, when a broad river came across their path, 
the man stepped shuddering back, saying the waters looked 
cold and deep, and he could not wade through them. 

The child dipped her wreath in the water, and straightway 
a glorious rainbow spanned the river. 

On the opposite side appeared Mary, with a rose upon her 
bosom, and a bright revolving star on her forehead. She too 
began to sing — 

" Loud sound the notes of lofty cheer, 
Be strong of heart — thy Home is near ! " 

Then a bright smile lighted up the face of the wearied 
traveller. He folded his arms, and the shining child guided 
him across the rainbow with her wreath of flowers. 

On the other side, stood a stately palace of gold and pearl ; 
and when he entered, he beheld the self-same crystal mirror, 
where he, in the far olden time, had tried to kiss the image of 
his Mary. 

The coins he had given his enemy changed to golden harps, 
and made heavenly music. The withered rose bloomed again 
in more glorious beauty, and the whole air was filled with its 
fragrant breath, as it waved gracefully in the gentle breeze. 

Then John fell on the neck of his beloved, and said, " We 
have found our Father's house. This is our Home." 



246 LETTEES FROM NEW YORK. 



LETTER Y. 



January, 20, 1844. 



Inquiring one day for a washerwoman, I was referred to a 
coloured woman, in Lispenard Street, by the name of Charity 
Bowery. I found her a j)erson of uncommon intelligence, and 
great earnestness of manner. 

In answer to my enquiries, she told me her history, which I 
will endeavour to relate precisely in her own words. Unfor- 
tunately, I cannot give the highly dramatic effect it received 
from her expressive intonations, and rapid variations of coun- 
tenance. 

With the exception of some changes of names, I repeat^, 
with perfect accuracy, what she said, as follows : — 

" I am about sixty-five years old, I was born near Edenton, 
North Carolina. My master was very kind to his slaves. If 
an overseer whipped them, he turned him away. He used to- 
whip them himself sometimes, with hickory switches as large 
as my little finger. My mother nursed all his children. She 
was reckoned a very good servant ; and our mistress made it 
a point to give one of my mother's children to each of her own.. 
I fell to the lot of Elizabeth, her second daughter. It was my 
business to wait upon her. Oh, my old mistress was a kind 
woman. She was all the same as a mother to poor Charity. 
If Charity wanted to learn to spin, she let her learn ; if 
Charity wanted to learn to knit, she let her learn ; if Charity 
wanted to learn to weave, she let her learn. I had a wedding 
when I was married ; for mistress didn't like to have Aer people 
take up with one another, without any minister to marry them. 
When my dear good mistress died, she charged her children 
never to separate me and my husband j ' For,' said she, ' if ever 
there was a match made in heaven, it was Charity and her 
husband.' My husband was a nice good man ; and mistress 
knew we set stores by one another. Her children promised 
they never would separate me from my husband and children. 
Indeed, they used to tell me they would never sell me at all y 
and I am sure they meant what they said. But my young 
master got into troulDle. He used to come home and sit lean- 
ing his head on his hand by the hour together, without speaking 
to any body. I see something was the matter ; and I begged 



LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 247 

of him to tell me what made him look so worried. He told 
me he owed seventeen hundred dollars, that he could not pay ; 
and he was afraid he should have to go to prison. I begged 
him to sell me and my children, rather than to go to jail. I 
see the tears come into his eyes. ' I don't know, Charity,' said 
lie ; ' I'll see what can be done. One thing you may feel easy 
about ; I will never separate you from your husband and chil- 
dren, let what will come.' 

" Two or three days after, he came to me, and says he ; 
' Charity, how should you be liked to be sold to Mr. Kinmore?' 
I told him I would rather be sold to him than to any body else, 
because my husband belonged to him. My husband was a nice 
good man, and we set stores by one another. Mr. Kinmore 
agreed to buy us ; and so I and my children went there to live. 

He was a kind master ; but as for mistress Kinmore, she 

was a devil % Mr. Kinmore died a few years after he bought 
us ; and in his will he give me and my husband free ; but I 
never knowed anything about it, for years afterward. I don't 
know how they managed it. My poor husband died, and never 
knowed that he was free. But it's all the same now. He's 
among the ransomed. He used to say, ' Thank God, it's only 
a little way home ; I shall soon be with Jesus.' Oh, he had a 
fine old Cliristian heart." 

Here the old woman sighed deeply, and remained silent for 
a moment, while her right hand slowly rose and fell upon her 
lap, as if her thoughts were mournfully busy. At last she re- 
sumed. 

" Sixteen children I've had, first and last ; and twelve 
I've nursed for mistress. From the time my first baby was 
born, I always set my heart upon buying freedom for some of 
my children. I thought it was of more consequence to them, 
than to me ; for I was old, and used to be a slave. But mis- 
tress Kinmore wouldn't let me have my children. One after 
another — one after another — she sold 'em away from me. Oh, 
liow many times that woman's broke my heart !" 

Here her voice choked, and the tears began to flow. She 
wiped them quickly with the corner of her apron, and con- 
tinued : '' I tried every way I could, to lay up a copper to buy 
my children ; but I found it pretty hard ; for mistress kept me 
at work all the time. It was ' Charity ! Charity ! Charity ! ' 
from morning till night. ' Charity, do this,' and ' Charity, do 
that.' 



248 LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 

" I used to do the washings of the family ; and large wash- 
ings they were. The public road run right by my little hut ; 
and I thought to myself, while I stood there at the wash-tub, 
I might, just as well as not, be earning something to buy my 
children. So I set up a little oyster- board ; and when any- 
body come along, that wanted a few oysters and a cracker, I left 
my wash-tub and waited upon him. When I got a little money 
laid up, I went to my mistress and tried to buy one of my chil- 
dren. She knew how long my heart had been set upon it, and 
how hard I had worked for it. But she wouldn't let me have 
one ! — She wouldnH let me have one ! So, I went to work 
again ; and set up late o' nights, in hopes I could earn enough 
to tempt her. When I had two hundred dollars, I went to her 
again ; but she thought she could find a better market, and she 
wouldn't let me have one. At last, what did you think that 
woman did? She sold me and five of my children to the 
si^eculators ! Oh, how I did feel, when I heard my children 
was sold to the speculators ! " 

I knew very well that by speculators the poor mother meant 
men whose trade it is to buy up coffles of slaves, as they buy 
cattle for the market. 

After a short pause, her face brightened up, and her voice 
suddenly changed to a gay and sprightly tone. 

" Surely, ma'am, there's always some good comes of being 
kind to folks. While I kept my oyster-board, there was a 
thin, peaked-looking man, used to come and buy of me. Some- 
times he would say, ' Aunt Charity (he always called me Aunt 
Charity), you must fix me up a nice little mess, for I feel poor- 
ly to-day.' I always made something good for him ; and if he 
didn't happen to have any change, I always trusted him. He 
liked my messes mighty well. — Now, who do you think that 
should turn out to be, but the very speculator that bought me ! 
He come to me, and says he, ' Aunt Charity (he always called 
me Aunt Charity), you've been very good to me, and fixed me 
up many a nice little mess, when I've been poorly ; and now 
you shall have your freedom for it, and I'll give you your 
youngest child.'" 

" That was very kind," said I ; " but I wish he had given 
you all of them." 

With a look of great simplicity, and in tones of expostula- 
tion, the slave-mother replied, " Oh, he couldn't afibrd that, you 
know." 



LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 249 

" Well," continued she, " after that, I concluded I'd come to 
the Free States. But mistress had one child of mine ; a boy 
about twelve years old. I had always set my heart upon buy- 
ing Richard. He was the image of his father ; and my husband 
was a nice a good man ; and we set stores by one another. 
Besides, I was always uneasy in my mind about Bichard. He 
was a spirity lad ; and I knew it was very hard for him to be 
a slave. Many a time;, I have said to him, ' Bichard, let what 
will happen, never lift your hand against your master." 

" But I knew it would always be hard work for him to be a 
slave. I carried all my money to my mistress, and told her I 
had more due to me ; and if all of it wasn't enough to buy my 
poor boy, I'd work hard and send her all my earnings, till she 
said I had paid enough. She knew she could trust me. She 
knew Charity always kept her word. But she was a hard- 
hearted woman. She wouldn't let me have my boy. With a 
heavy heart, I went to work to earn more, in hopes I might 
one day be able to buy him. To be sure, I didn't get much 
more time, than I did when I was a slave ; for mistress was 
always calling upon me ; and I didn't like to disoblige her. I 
wanted to keej) the right side of her, in hopes she'd let me 
have my boy. One day, she sent me off an errand. I had to 
wait some time. When I come back, mistress was counting a 
heap of bills in her lap. She was a rich woman, — she rolled 
in gold. My little girl stood behind her chair ; and as mistress 
counted the money, — ten dollars, — twenty dollars, — fifty dol- 
lars, — I see that she kept crying. I thought may be mistress 
had struck her. But when I see the tears keep rolling down 
her cheeks all the time, I went up to her, and whispered, 
•* What's the matter ? ' She pointed to mistress's lap and said, 
■'Broder's money! Broder's money!* Oh, then I understood 
it all ! I said to mistress Kinmore, ' Have you sold my boy % ' 
Without looking up from counting her money, she drawled out, 
* Yes, Charity ; and I got a great price for him ! ' " [Here the 
•coloured woman imitated to perfection the languid, indolent 
tone of Southern ladies.] 

" Oh, my heart was too full ! She had sent me away of an 
•errand, because she didn't Avant to be troubled with our cries. 
I hadn't any chance to see my poor boy. I shall never see him 
-again in this world. My heart felt as if it was under a great 
load of lead. I couldn't speak my feelings. I never spoke 
them to her, from that day to this. As I went out of the 



250 LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 

room, I lifted up my hands, and all I could say was, ' Mistress^ 
how coiold you do it ? ' " 

The poor creature's voice had grown more and more tremu- 
lous, as she proceeded, and was at length stifled with sobs. 

After some time, she resumed her story : " When my boy 
was gone, I thought I might sure enough as well go to the 
Free States. But mistress had a little grandchild of mine. 
His mother died when he was born. I thought it would be 
some comfort to me, if I could buy little orphan Sammy. So 
I carried all the money I had to my mistress again, and asked 
her if she would let me buy my grandson. But she wouldn't 
let me have him. Then I had nothing more to wait for ; so I 
come on to the Free States. Here I have taken in washing ;, 
and my daughter is smart at her needle j and we get a very 
comfortable living." 

" Do you ever hear from any of your children?" said I. 

" Yes, ma'am, I hear from one of them. Mistress Kinmore 
sold one to a lady, that comes to the North every summer ; and 
she brings my daughter with her." 

" Don't she know that it is a good chance to take her free- 
dom, when she is brought to the North ? " said I. 

" To be sure she knows that,^' replied Charity, with signifi- 
cant emphasis. "But my daughter is pious. She's member of 
a church. Her mistress knows she wouldn't tell a lie for her 
right hand. She makes her promise on the Bible, that she 
won't try to run away, and that she will go back to the South 
with her; and so, ma'am, for her honour and her Christianity's 
sake, she goes back into slavery." 

" Is her mistress kind to her ? " 

" Yes, ma'am ; but then everybody likes to be free. Her 
mistress is ver^/ kind. She says I may buy her for four hun- 
dred dollars ; and that's a low price for her, — two hundred 
paid down, and the rest as we can earn it. Kitty and I are 
trying to lay up enough to buy her." 

" What has become of your mistress Kinmore 1 Do you 
ever hear from her?'' 

" Yes, ma'am, I often hear from her ; and summer before 
last, as I was walking up Broadway, with a basket of clean 
clothes, who should I meet but my old mistress Kinmore? 
She gave a sort of a start, and said, in her drawling way, ' O, 
Charity, is it you?' Her voice sounded deep and hollow, as if 
it come from under the ground ; for she was far gone in a con- 



LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 251 

sumption. If I wasn't mistaken, there was a something about 
here (laying lier hand on her heart), that made her feel strange- 
ly when she met poor Charity. Says I, ' How do you do, mistress 
Kinmore % How does little Sammy do ?' (That was my little 
grandson, you know, that she wouldn't let me buy)." 

" ' I'm poorly, Charity, says she ; ' very poorly, Sammy's a 
smart boy. He's grown tall, and tends table nicely. Every 
night I teach him his prayers.'" 

The indignant grandmother drawled out the last word in a 
tone, which Fanny Kemble herself could not have surpassed. 
Then suddenly changing both voice and manner, she added, in 
tones of earnest dignity, " Och ! I couldn't stand that! Good 
morning, ma'am ! " said I. 

I smiled, as I inquired whether she had heard from Mrs. 
Kinmore, since. 

"Yes, ma'am. The lady that brings my daughter to the 
North every summer, told me last Fall she didn't think mistress 
Kinmore could live long. When she went home, she asked 
me if I had any message to send to my old mistress. I told 
her I had a message to send. Tell her, says I, to prepare to 
meet poor Charity at the judgment seat." 

I asked Charity if she had heard any further tidings of her 
scattered children. The tears came to her eyes. "I found 
out that my poor Richard was sold to a man in Alabama. A 
white gentleman, who has been very kind to me, here in New 
York, went to them parts lately, and brought me back news of 
Richard. His master ordered him to be flogged, and he wouldn't 
come ujD to be tied. ' If you don't come up, you black rascal, 
I'll shoot you,' said his master. ' Shoot away,' said Richard ; 
' I won't come to be flogged.' His master pointed a pistol at 
him, — and, — in two hours my poor boy was dead ! Richard 
was a spirity lad. I always knew it was hard for him to be a 
slave. Well, he's free now. God be praised, he's free now ; 
and I shall soon be with him." ''' * * * * 

In the course of my conversations with this interesting 
woman, she told me much about the patrols, who, armed with 
arbitrary power, and frequently intoxicated, break into the 
houses of the coloured people at the south, and subject them 
to all manner of outrages. But nothing seemed to have ex- 
cited her imagination so much as the insurrection of Nat 
Turner. The panic that prevailed throughout the Slave States 
on that occasion, of course, reached her ear in repeated echoes ; 



252 LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 

and the reasons are obvious why it should have awakened 
intense interest. It was in fact a sort of Hegira to her mind, 
from which she was prone to date all important events in the 
history of her limited world. 

" On Sundays," said she, " I have seen the negroes up in 
the country going away under large oaks, and in secret places, 
sitting in the woods, with spelling books. The brightest and 
best men were killed in Nat's time. Such ones are always 
suspected. All the coloured folks were afraid to pray, in the 
time of the old Prophet Nat. There was no law about it ; but 
the whites reported it round among themselves, that if a note 
was heard, we should have some dreadful punishment. After 
that, the low whites would fall upon any slaves they heard 
praying, or singing a hymn ; and they often killed them, before 
their masters or mistresses could get to them." 

I asked Charity to give me a specimen of their slave hymns. 
In a voice cracked with age, but still retaining considerable 
sweetness, she sang : — 

"A few more beatings of the wind and rain, 
Ere the winter will be over — 

Glory, Hallelujah ! 

Some friends has gone before me, — 
I must try to go and meet them — 

Glory, Hallelujah ! 

A few more risings and settings of the sun, 
Ere the winter will be over — 

Glory, Hallelujah ! 

There's a better day a coming — 
There's a better day a coming — 

Oh, Glory, Hallelujah !" 

With a very arch expression, she looked up, as she con- 
cluded, and said, " They wouldn't let us sing that. They 
wouldn't let us sing that. They thought we was going to rise, 
because we sung ' better days are coming.' " 

I shall never forget poor Charity's natural eloquence, or the 
spirit of Christian meekness and forbearance, which so beauti- 
fully characterised her expressions. She has now gone where 
" the wicked cease from troubling, and the weary are at rest." 



LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 253 

LETTER YI. 

January 26, 1844. 

I WENT, a few days ago, to hear Professor Gonraud's intro- 
ductory lecture on Phreno-Mnemotechny ; a new system of 
Mnemonics, which promises to form a memory of incalculable 
powers of retention, in ten lessons, of an hour each. The 
Tabernacle was crowded ; for men are always desirous to find 
some rail-road to learning, some machine for the manufacture 
of intellect. 

The lecturer having been much incommoded by a defective 
memory in early life, and having for years given his attention 
almost exclusively to this subject, very naturally exaggerates 
its importance. Valuable as memory is, it could not, even in 
the highest state of cultivation, ever be what he styled it : ''the 
lever of Archimedes in science, literature, and art ;" " the su- 
preme power of the mind ;" " the source from which Phidias, 
Michael Angelo, Mozart, &c., mainly derived their immortal 
fame." 

I believe he brought forward everything that could be brought, 
to exalt the praises of memory, except the testimony of myth- 
ology. But if he had recollected to state that the Nine Muses 
had for their mother, Mnemosyne, Goddess of Memory, he 
probably would have forgotten to state that they likewise had 
Jupiter for their father. For though he would doubtless ac- 
knowledge that there is a transcendent power in the mind, 
which uses memory merely to give form to its divinity, yet, in 
the zeal of his theory, he seems to lose sight of the fact. He 
has the outward world safely and systematically packed in his 
Mnemonic warehouse, and rejoices over it, as a merchant does 
over the gold in his iron safe. They are both in danger of for- 
getting that their treasures are not wealth, but only represent- 
atives of wealth. 

Among the examples of extraordinary natural memory, the 
lecturer first cited Adam ; because he remembered the names 
of " all the beasts of the field, and all the fowls of the air." 
But how this could be an act of memory, I could not imagine ; 
for, according to the account, Adam gave the names, which of 
course had no existence till they fell from his own lips. 

Every outward form has a correspondence with some varia- 
tion of thought or feeling in the soul of man, and from that, 



254: LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 

thought or affection derives its existence. This science of cor- 
respondence is no freak of imagination ; it is governed by laws 
as fixed and universal as the laws of chemistry and mathe- 
matics. At the present jDeriod of the world, men preserve a 
glimmering recollection of this science in mere fragments of 
metaphor, from which we may imagine somewhat of the beauty 
of the harmonious whole, as the Elgin marbles indicate the 
perfection of the Parthenon. But Adam doubtless saw himself 
in Nature, as we see our faces in a mirror. Therefore, when 
the animals passed before him, he at once recognized the idea 
or feeling of which they were the outward form ; and the idea 
or feeling vibrated as its image passed, and thus gave birth to 
language. Thus do the little points on the barrel of a music- 
box touch their appropriate keys, and speak in melody. This 
universal and intimate relation of the spiritual with the natural 
world, from which language flows, with " its -^olian-harp ac- 
companiment of tones," was pre-arranged by the Infinite Mind, 
as the tune of the music-box, was arranged by the composer. 
When Adam named the things of earth, I apprehend he made 
no more effort of memory, than do the points on the barrel of 
a music-box. 

Among the examples of wonderful natural memory, the lec- 
turer cited Cyrus, who knew the name of every soldier in his 
army ; Themistocles, who could call every citizen of Athens by 
name ; Ccesar, who could dictate to six secretaries at once, in 
as many different languages ; Cleopatra, wdio could converse 
with ease in thirty or forty different dialects of the East ; Hor- 
tensius, the orator, who could go to an auction-room, listen to 
the day's sales, and the next repeat the price and purchaser of 
every article ; and Crebillon, who composed all his works in 
his mind, without the aid of pen and ink. But of all the char- 
acters he mentioned, none so much excited my pity, as the 
Boman, who remembered, word for word, all the public dis- 
courses he had ever heard. I felt for him the most profound 
compassion ; somewhat alleviated by the idea that he was not 
born in this republic, and carried no Fourth of July orations 
with him to another world. 

Professor Gouraud related an anecdote of Yoltaire, which 
may be new to some readers. While he was at the court of 
Prussia, he announced his intention to read a new poem in the 
presence of Frederick and his courtiers. The time arrived, and 
preparations for the recital were made with much jjomp and 



i 



LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 255 

circumstance. Yoltaire came in full dress, with his precious 
MS. written on vellum, and tied with rose-coloured ribbon. 
He read it in his best style, and waited for the expected ap- 
plause. Frederick very coolly remarked that the poet had been 
playing them a trick : that the poem had been read to him 
months ago, by an officer of his army, who had been so unfor- 
tunate as to lose the MS. Voltaire, mortified and indignant, 
denied the possibility of such a thing. The officer was accord- 
ingly called, and being asked whether he had yet found his MS., 
he answered, no. When asked to recite such portions of it as 
he could recollect, he repeated, word for word, from beginning 
to end, the poem which had just been read. Overwhelmed 
Avith vexation and shame, Voltaire w^as about to rush from the 
room, but Frederick recalled him, saying, " Excuse me, my 
friend, this is all a hoax. I heard that an officer of my army 
boasted that he could remember a book by hearing it once read. 
In order to test his powers, I placed him behind a curtain while 
you recited your poem, and he has recollected every syllable." 
The explanation was of course satisfactory, and the poet cordi- 
ally shook hands with his daguerrotype. The lecturer regretted 
that the name of this prodigy of memory had not been preserved. 
But what would his name express to us 1 It would say no more 
than a row of nails from his boot. He would be merely a ghost 
with a shadow, instead of without one. 

The lecturer told us that Pope Clement VI. being knocked 
down in a riot in the streets of Kome, and taken up senseless, 
i-ecovered with miraculous powers of memory ; insomuch, that 
he remembered all he heard or read, without being able to 
comprehend how he did it. This singular efi^ect of disease re- 
minded me of the well-known case, related by Coleridge, of a 
very ignorant servant girl, who, in the paroxj^sms of fevei-, re- 
cited l>age after page of Homer, ^schylus. Virgil, &c., with 
great fluency and correctness. A close investigation into the 
phenomenon led to the discovery that she had, in her cliildhood, 
lived with a learned old clergyman, who was in the daily habit 
of reading Greek and Latin authors aloud, as he passed and 
repassed the room where she was at work. The words alto- 
gether unassociated with ideas, had impressed themselves upon 
her mind, and sickness by some unknown agency, made them 
' visible. Coleridge suggests that it is thus every word will be 
brought to judgment hereafter. 

Drunkenness plays strange pranks with the memory. AVith 



256 LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 

all its beastliness there is something transcendental about it. 
It rends away the veil in which men walk disguised, and com- 
pels them to speak in vino Veritas. It likewise removes one 
curtain from the memory, while it draws another. The sot 
forgets what he did when he was sober, but when drunk again, 
he recollects all that occurred in previous drunkenness. If he 
loses a package while intoxicated, the only way to gain know- 
ledge of it is to get him drunk again. Some of the phenomena 
of animal magnetism are strikingly similar to this. In fact, 
disease is not unfrequently the cause of wonderful manifesta- 
tions of memory, though sometimes merely of words, and 
sometimes merely of figures. 

Printed programmes were handed to the audience, containing 
chronological tables, diameters and distances of the planets, 
tables of latitude and longitude, and miscellaneous facts, many 
of them apparently chosen merely for their oddity, as the most 
unlikely things to be remembered by the natural process. The 
simultaneous opening of thousands of these papers sounded like 
a driving shower among the leaves of a forest; and appealing 
thus to my imagination, it afforded momentary relief to the 
stifling atmosphere of the crowded room. From these papers, 
the audience selected questions at will, which were answered 
by the professor's pupils, with wonderful rapidity. One young- 
lady filled a large blackboard with arithmetical figures, as fast 
as her hand could move; and had there been time enough, she 
might, apparently, have gone on to cover the walls of the entire 
room with her interminable rows; yet when these figures were 
compared with those printed in the programme, not one of them 
was out of place. A little boy and girl, about eight years old, 
answered, very promptly, a great variety of puzzling questions, 
about the diameter and distances of the planets, and the date 
of remarkable events. These questions were chosen indis- 
criminately and answered accurately, though the cliildren had 
had but few hours instruction. One young man seemed able 
to repeat all dates. He could tell when Jacob dreamed his 
dream, when the whale swallowed Jonah, when Samuel hewed 
Agag to pieces, when Zimri began to reign, when Tobit was 
persecuted by his ill-tempered wife, and many other things, 
equally inij^ortant and interesting, set forth in the programme. 
Professor Grouraud assured his audience that all this volume of 
dates, facts, and figures, might be learned, as if by magic, by 
any one who would join his classes: that by spending on them 



LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 2d i 

about as miich time as it would take to read them once, we 
should wake up in the morning, and find them all in our heads. 
This suggestion made my brow begin to ache. I found some- 
thing extremely uncomfortable in the idea of having my 
intellectual ai)artments cluttered up with ghosts of Agag, 
Zimri, Jehoiakim, Tobit's quarrelsome wife, and the like. I 
felt something of the spirit of Bettina, when she said, "I would 
not ask my teacher who Nimrod was, for fear he should tell 
me; and it would be so useless to know." 

You will readily imagine that I am not fitted to be an 
enthusiast in Mnemonics. In the first place, I never could 
help remembering all I wanted to remember, and a great deal 
more; and in the next place, the outward interests me but 
little, except so far as I perceive its inward significance. If I 
could ascertain, or even imagine, what place Mrs. Tobit's 
scolding has among the great powers of Nature, or what link it 
supplies in the chain of causation, I should feel interested in 
her. But why should I care to know the day and the year 
when a shadow from a magic lantern danced on the wall? 

Do not understand me as underrating the importance of 
statistics, or the exceeding usefulness of memory. As the 
greatest soul connot perform its functions well, except through 
the medium of a healthly body, so the inspiration which teaches 
all discoveries and inventions in science, art, and literature, 
needs the medium of a well arranged memory. But memory 
is only a vessel into which the inspiration is poured; merely a 
cup to contain the glowing wine. 

Professor Gouraud's attention was originally drawn to the 
subject by the deficiency of his own memory. When young, 
he had the strongest desire for knowledge, but could not 
possibly retain what he learned. His parents, of course, 
would not venture to knock him on the head, like Pope 
Clement VI., for fear they should not happen to hit the right 
place ; so they endeavoured to help him with such systems of 
Mnemonics as were then known. One of these, called the 
System of Localities, consists in associating the fact or date 
with some article of furniture in the house, as a chair, or 
a picture. This process fills up the mind like an auction 
room, and seems somewhat similar to that of the woman, who 
caused her stairs to be pulled down and re-built, to make the 
figure of her carpet come in the right place. A man once 
prepared, after this fashion, a speech he was about to deliver; 

R 



258 LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 

but the building marked with his localities burned down the 
night before, and his memory was gone. The next system 
proposed was that of Animalisation, by which historical facts 
were associated with animals. Thus events in the life of 
Solomon would be recalled by previous associations with various 
parts of an elephant; the elephant being the wisest of animals. 
The history of Athens would be associated with an owl, the 
sacred bird of Athens ; that of Rome with the eagle, which was 
her national emblem, &c. This menagerie in the head took u]) 
more room than the ideas they were intended to fasten, and 
the system w^as soon dismissed, as useless to mankind. The 
German, Feinagle, invented a new art of memory, which was 
afterward improved upon by Dr. Gray. In his "Memoria 
Teclinica" he proposes to make certain changes in the names of 
persons, places, &c., in such a way that the words shall signify 
also certain 'numbers, according to tables previously drawn up. 

Professor Gouraud does not explain what his system is; but 
he says the principle on which it is based was suggested to his 
mind by the theory of Feinagle and Gray. He did not take 
their system, and remove obstructions from its application; he 
merely received a suggestion from it. The light they afforded 
was to him as the drifting sea-weed to Columbus ; not a thing 
to land upon, but showing the vicinity of land. He has been 
labouring upon it four years, and thinks he has now brought it 
to absolute perfection. 

The results, as exhibited to the public, are certainly surpris- 
ing; especially on his own once defective memory, which now 
seems to be an encyclopedia of science and art. 

He asserts that the system can be successfully applied to 
every branch of human knowledge, even to the acquisition of 
languages. He believes it was j)re-arranged by God, and that 
He intended man should remember all things by just this 
process; but w^e, in our blundering stupidity, have been nearly 
six thousand years finding it out. 

As Phrenology is the democracy of metaphysics, and Photo- 
graphy the democracy of drawing, so Mnemonics appears to be, 
emphatically, the democracy of learning. It levels all dis- 
tinctions. The ignorant slave, or the child of eight years old, 
can tell all about the planets, as accurately as the best 
astronomer and mathematician; though they know nothing of 
the laws by which the answer was obtained. 

The Professor urged, as a recommendation of the system, that 



LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 259 

the acquisition of learning by tliis process required no serious 
effort of the mind. But this seemed to me a very grave 
objection to it. Knowledge of external things is doubtless 
extremely valuable; and strictly speaking, no fact is unimpor- 
tant. But, compared with the strength of mind gained in 
acquiring them, the facts themselves dwindle into insignificance. 
The soul is invigorated by effort, as the muscles of a gold- 
beater's arm grow strong by exertion. 

Memory which develops itself by natural and healthy growth, 
is formed by associating a fact with other facts, and all facts 
with ideas and principles; and to such a mind, facts always 
suggest ideas and principles. Thus a philosophic memory is 
formed, while imagination is stimulated, and the reflective 
jjowers invigorated. The very best system of artificial memory 
must be wanting in this principle of flexibility and growth. So 
far as it enables the mind to dispense with labour, it is a serious 
injury. The process may, however, be very convenient in the 
details of business; though Raphaels, Mozarts, and Newtons, 
cannot grow by steam, even of forty- horse power. 

P. S. — Speaking of memory, reminds me of Dickens's new 
story. The Christmas Carol. The newspapers announce it 
merely as a "ghost story." It is a most genial production, one 
of the sunniest bubbles that ever floated on the stream of light 
literature. The ghost is nothing more or less than memory. 

About this Carol, I will tell you "a merry toy," as Jeremy 
Taylor was wont to say. Two friends of mine proposed to give 
me a New- Year's present, and asked me to choose what it 
should be. I had certain projects in my head for the benefit of 
another person, and I answered that the most acceptable gift 
would be a donation to carry out my plans. One of the friends, 
whom I addressed, was ill pleased with my request. She 
either did not like the object, or she thought I had no right 
thus to change the appropriation of their intended bounty. 
She at once said, in a manner extremely laconic and decided, 
" I won't give one cent." Her sister remonstrated, and re- 
presented tliat the person in question had been very unfortunate. 
"There is no use in talking to me," she replied; "I won't give 
one cent." 

Soon after, a neighbour sent in Dickens's Christmas Carol, 
saying it was a new work, and perhaps the ladies would like to 
read it. When the story was carried home, the neighbour 



260 



LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 



asked, "How did you like it?" "I have not much reason to 
thank you for it," said she; "for it has cost me three dollars." 
"And pray how is that?" "I was called upon to contribute 
toward a charitable object, which did not in all respects meet 
my approbation. I said I wouldn^t give one cent. Sister tried 
to coax me ; but I told her it was of no use, for I wouldn't give 
one cent. But I have read the Christmas Carol, and now I am 
obliged to give three dollars." 

It is indeed a blessed mission to write books which abate 
prejudices, unlock the human heart, and make the kindly 
sympathies flow freely. 



LETTER YII. 

February 14, 1844. 

To-day is St. Valentine's day, the observance of which is said 
to have originated among the Romans, who, on a festival of 
Juno, on the 14th of February, put into a box the names of 
young women to be drawn out by young men. The Roman 
Catholics, according to their usual policy of transferring to 
their church festivals endeared to the populace by long usage, 
gave the day to St. Valentine, instead of Juno. This saint was 
a Roman bishop, who suffered martyrdom under the Emperor 
Claudius II., and was afterward canonized. How he came to 
be the peculiar patron of love-tokens, it is not easy to ascertain. 
It probably was an accident that the day set apart for him in 
the Catholic calendar happened to come on the 14th of February. 
Whatever gave him this distinction, his name is now associated 
with love and courtship throughout Christendom; and very 
curious are some of the old customs observed in honour of St. 
Valentine. 

Within the feM"- last years, the observance of this festival has 
been extending in ISTew York, and it has now become quite a 
showy afiair. Valentines, engraved for the occasion, are 
displayed in the shop windows in great profusion. The styles 
are various; from the most beautiful and tasteful devices, 
valued at seven or eight dollars, down to the most comic and 
grotesque, for fifty, or twenty-five cents. In some, the paper 
is edged with an exquisite imitation of the finest Brabant lace; 



LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 261 

and in the corner, a smiling Cupid rides on a butterfly, or lies 
partially concealed in a richly-coloured rose. Others are edged 
with arabesques of gold, or an ultra-marine ground; and the 
letters of the amorous epistle are variously coloured, like the 
gorgeous old illuminated MSS. In some, the image of Cupid 
sleeps on delicate white satin; in others, he is hidden under a 
network of silvered or gilded paper, cut so fine, that when 
raised up, the little god seems enclosed in a cage of cobwebs. 
Among the comic ones, I noticed a very fat man, with a 
blowsy-faced Cupid shooting roast-beef into his mouth. To-day, 
there is a strong reinforcement of carriers, and a great crowd 
round the post-office. Forty thousand valentines, it is said, 
pass through in the course of the day. To-night, a club of 
bachelors, according to annual custom, give the ladies a 
brilliant ball, at the Astor House. 

''Hail to thy returning festival, old Bishop Valentine !" says 
Charles Lamb. "Great is thy name in the rubric, thou 
venerable arch-flamen of Hymen ! Immortal go-between ! who 
and what manner of person art thou? Art thou but a name, 
typifying the restless principle which impels poor humans to 
seek perfection in union? Or wert thou indeed a mortal 
prelate, with thy tippet and thy rochet, thy apron on, and 
decent lawn sleeves'? Mysterious personage! Like unto thee 
assuredly there is no other mitred father in the calendar. 
Thou comest attended with thousands and tens of thousands of 
little Loves, and the air 'brushed with the hiss of rustling 
wings;' singing Cupids are thy choristers; and instead of the 
crosier, the mystical arrow is borne before thee." 

In London, it is said that two hundred thousand letters, 
beyond usual daily average, annually pass through the post- 
o£B.ce on St. Valentine's day. "Two hundred thousand pence 
paid for foolery!" exclaims an old gentleman. To which the 
daughter replies, "Why then just two hundred thousand peo- 
ple must be in love with each other." "Ah, child, thou art a 
foolish reckoner. All Valentines are not in love. Instead of 
bleeding hearts transfixed with arrows, many of them would 
do well to choose for their emblem a fox eating a silly goose, or 
a puppy munching the butterfly that sails into his open 
mouth." 

The cynical old gentleman is right ; painful as it is to oppose 
his bitter sarcasm to the rose-coloured dreams of unsuspecting, 
youth, Those gaily-dressed Valentines in our windows, will 



262 LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 

many of them, be sent on evil errands. To-day will commence 
some private tragedies, on which the curtain is to fall at the 
mad-house, or on Blackwell's Island. 

Alas, society is like an inverted pyramid, and that which 
should point to the heavens, is buried in the earth. The 
highest fact in man's mysterious existence, the holiest emblem 
of the union of divine with human, the mediation between 
matter and spirit, by which the former should become glorified 
and god-like, and thus ascend unto the bosom of the Father — 
this sacred gift is trampled under the feet of men, and changed 
into a stinging serpent^ which carries its foul slime over the 
roses of life. 

Moore beautifully describes the contest between two principles 
which, in a right order of things, would never be antagonistical, 
but only beautiful and harmonious qualities of one law of our 
being. He thus describes a festival in the Epicurean gardens: 
"Over the lake of the Temple were scattered wreaths of 
flowers, through which boats, filled with beautiful children, 
floated, as through a liquid parterre. Between two of these 
boats a mock combat was perpetually carried on; their respective 
commanders, two blooming youths, being habited to represent 
Eros and Anteros ; the former the Celestial Love of the Pla- 
tonists, and the latter, that more earthly spirit, which usurps 
the name of Love among the Eijicureans. Throughout the 
whole evening, their conflict was maintained with various 
success. The timid distance at which Eros kept aloof from his 
lively antagonist, being his only safeguard against those darts of 
fire, with showers of which the other assailed him, but which 
falling short of their mark upon the lake, only scorched the few 
flowers on which they fell ^ and were extinguished." 

I have wandered from the shop windows of New York, to 
Grecian gardens, in the ancient time. My mind has a trouble- 
some habit, which compels it to fly high above the surface of 
things, or dive into the hidden caves beneath. To atone for 
my mystical vagaries, I will tell a true story, not without 
significance at this season of Valentines. 

In a city, which shall be nameless, there lived, long ago, a 
young girl, the only daughter of a widow. She came from the 
country, and was as ignorant of the dangers of a city, as the 
squirrels of her native fields. She had glossy black hair, gentle, 
beaming eyes, and "lips like wet coral." Of course, she knew 
that she was beautiful; for when she was a child, strangers 



LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 263 

often stopped as slie passed, and exclaimed, "How handsome 
she is ! " And as she grew older, the young men gazed on her 
with admiration. She was poor, and removed to the city to 
earn her living by covering umbrellas. She was just at that 
suscej^tible age, when youth was passing into womanliood; 
when the soul begins to be pervaded by "that restless principle, 
which impels poor humans to seek perfection in union." 

At the hotel opposite, Lord Henry Stuart, an English 
nobleman, had at that time taken lodgings. His visit to this 
country is doubtless well remembered by many, for it made a 
great sensation at the time, He was a peer of the realm, 
descended from the royal line, and was, moreover, a strikingly 
handsome man, of right princely carriage. He was subse- 
quently a member of the British Parliament, and is now dead. 

As this distinguished stranger passed to and from his hotel, 
he encountered the umbrella girl, and was impressed by her 
uncommon beauty. He easily traced her to the opposite store, 
where he soon after went to purchase an umbrella. This was 
followed up by presents of flowers, chats by the way-side, and 
invitations to walk or ride; all of which were gratefully 
accepted by the unsuspecting rustic. He was playing a game, 
for temporary excitement; she, with a head full of romance, 
and a heart melting under the influence of love, was uncon- 
sciously endangering the happiness of her whole life. 

Lord Henry invited her to visit the public gardens, on the 
Fourth of July. In the simplicity of her heart, she believed 
all his flattering professions, and considered herself his bride 
elect; she therefore accepted the invitation, with innocent 
frankness. But she had no dress fit to appear on such a public 
occasion, with a gentleman of high rank, whom she verily 
supposed to be her destined husband. While these thoughts 
revolved in her mind, her eye was unfortunately attracted by a 
beautiful piece of silk, belonging to her employer. Ah, could 
she not take it, without being seen, and pay for it secretly, 
when she had earned money enough^ The temptation con- 
quered her in a moment of weakness. She concealed the 
silk, and conveyed it to her lodgings. It was the first thing 
she had ever stolen, and her remorse was painful. She would 
have carried it back, but she dreaded discovery. She was not 
sure that her repentance would be met in a spirit of forgiveness. 

On the eventful Fourth of July, she came out in her new 
dress. Lord Henry complimented her upon her elegant 



264 LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 

appearance ; but slie was not lia}:)py. On their way to the 
gardens, he talked to her in a manner which she did not com- 
prehend. Perceiving this, he spoke more explicitly. The 
guileless young creature stopped, looked in his face with 
mournful reproach, and burst into tears. The nobleman took 
her hand kindly, and said, " My dear, are you an innocent 
girl ? " "I am, I am," replied she, with convulsive sobs. "Oh, 
what have I ever done, or said, that you should ask me that 1 " 
Her words stirred the deep fountains of his better nature. 
" If you are innocent," said he, " God forbid that I should 
make you otherwise. But you accepted my invitations and 
presents so readily, that I supposed you understood me." 
" What could I understand," said she, " except that you in- 
tended to make me your wife?" Though reared amid the 
proudest distinctions of rank, he felt no inclination to smile. 
He blushed and was silent. The heartless conventionalities of 
life stood rebuked in the presence of affectionate simplicity. 
He conveyed her to her humble home, and bade her farewell, 
with a thankful consciousness that he had done no irretrievable 
injury to her future pros23ects. The remembrance of her would 
soon be to him as the recollection of last year's butterflies. 
With her, the wound was deeper. In her solitary chamber, 
she wept, in bitterness of heart, over her ruined air-castles. 
And that dress, which she had stolen to make an appearance 
befitting his bride ! Oh, what if she should be discovered? 
And would not the heart of her poor widowed mother break, 
if she would ever know that her child was a thief? Alas, her 
wretched forebodings were too true. The silk was traced to 
her ; she was arrested, on her way to the store, and dragged to 
prison. There she refused all nourishment, and wept incessantly. 

On the fourth day, the keeper called upon Isaac T. Hopper, 
and informed him that there was a young girl in prison, who 
appeared to be utterly friendless, and determined to die by 
starvation. The kind-hearted Friend immediately went to her 
assistance. He found her lying on the floor of her cell, with 
her face buried in her hands, sobbing as if her heart would 
break. He tried to comfort her, but could obtain no answer. 

" Leave us alone," said he to the keeper. " Perhaps she 
will speak to me, if there is none to hear." When they were 
alone together, he put back the hair from her temples, laid his 
hand kindly on her beautiful head, and said in soothing tones, 
'' My child, consider me as thy father. Tell me all thou hast 



LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 265 

done. If thou hast taken this silk, let me know all about it. 
I will do for thee as I would for a daughter ; and I doubt not 
that I can help thee out of this difficulty." 

After a long time spent in affectionate entreaty, she leaned 
her young head on his friendly shoulder, and sobbed out, 
'' Oh, I wish I was dead. What will my poor mother say, 
when she knows of my disgrace*?" 

"Perhaps we can manage that she never shall know it," 
replied he ; and alluring her by this hope, he gradually obtained 
from her the whole story of her acquaintance with the noble- 
man. He bade her be comforted, and take nourishment ; for 
he would see that the silk was paid for, and the prosecution 
withdrawn. He went immediately to her employer, and told 
him the story. " This is her first offence," said he : "• the girl 
is young, and the only child of a poor widow. Give her a 
chance to retrieve this one false step, and she may be restored 
to society, a useful and honoured woman. I will see that thou 
art paid for the silk." The man readily agreed to withdraw 
the prosecution, and said he wou^ld have dealt otherwise by the 
girl, had he known all the circumstances. " Thou shouldest 
have inquired into the merits of the case, my friend," replied 
Isaac. "By this kind of thoughtlessness, many a young 
creature is driven into the downward path, who might easily 
have been saved." 

The kind-hearted man then went to the hotel and inquired 
for Henry Stuart. The servant said his lordship had not yet 
risen. " Tell him my business is of importance," said Friend 
Hopper. The servant soon returned and conducted him to the 
chamber. The nobleman appeared surprised that a plain 
Quaker should thus intrude upon his luxurious privacy ; but 
when he heard his errand, he blushed deeply, and frankly 
admitted the truth of the girl's statement. His benevolent 
visitor took the opportunity to " bear a testimony," as the 
Friends say, against the sin and selfishness of profligacy. He 
did it in such a kind and fatherly manner, that the young 
man's heart was touched. He excused himself, by saying that 
he would not have tampered with the girl, if he had known 
her to be virtuous. " I have done many wrong things,'^ said 
he, " but, thank God, no betrayal of confiding innocence rests 
on my conscience. I have always esteemed it the basest act of 
which man is capable." The imprisonment of the poor girl, 
and the forlorn situation in which she had been found, dis- 



266 LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 

tressed liim greatly. And when Isaac represented that the silk 
had been stolen for his sake, that the girl had thereby lost 
profitable employment, and was obliged to return to her distant 
home, to avoid the danger of exposure, he took out a fifty 
dollar note, and offered it to pay her expenses. " Nay," said 
Isaac, " thou art a very rich man ; I see in thy hand a large 
roll of such notes. She is the daughter of a poor widow, and 
thou hast been the means of doing her great injury. Give me 
another." 

Lord Henry handed him another fifty dollar note, and smiled 
as he said, " You understand your business well. But jou 
have acted nobly, and I reverence you for it. If you ever visit 
England, come to see me. I will give you a cordial welcome, 
and treat you like a nobleman." 

" Farewell, friend," replied Isaac : " Though much to blame 
in this affair, thou too hast behaved nobly. Mayst thou be 
blessed in domestic life, and trifle no more with the feelings of 
poor girls; not even with those whom others have betrayed 
and deserted." 

Luckily, the girl had sufiicient presence of mind to assume 
a false name, when arrested ; by which means her true name 
was kept out of the newspapers. " I did this," said she, " for my 
poor mother's sake." With the money given by Lord Henry, 
the silk was paid for, and she was sent home to her mother, 
well provided with clothing. Her name and j)lace of residence 
remain to this day a secret in the breast of her benefactor. 

Several years after the incidents I have related, a lady called 
at Friend Hopper's house, and asked to see him. When he en- 
tered the room, he found a handsomely dressed young matron, 
with a blooming boy of five or six years old. She rose to meet 
him, and her voice choked, as she said, " Friend Hopper, do 
you know me?" He replied that he did not. She fixed her 
tearful eyes earnestly upon him, and said, " You once helped 
me, when in great distress." But the good missionary of 
humanity had helped too many in distress, to be able to recol- 
lect her without more precise information. With a tremulous 
voice, she bade her son go into the next room, for a few min- 
utes; then dropping on her knees, she hid her face in his lap, 
and sobbed out, " I am the girl that stole the silk. Oh, where 
should I now be, if it had not been for you !" 

When her emotion was somewhat calmed, she told him that 
she had married a highly respectable man, a Senator of his 



LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 267 

native state. Having a call to visit the cit}^, she had again 
and again passed Friend Hopper's house, looking wistfully at 
the windows to catch a sight of him ; but when she attempted 
to enter, her courage failed. 

"But I go away to morrow," said she, "and I could not 
leave the city, without once more seeing and thanking him 
who saved me from ruin." She recalled her little boy, and 
said to him, "Look at that gentleman, and remember him 
well; for he was the best friend your mother ever had." With 
an earnest invitation that he would visit her happy home, and 
a fervent " God bless you," she bade her benefactor farewell. 

My venerable friend is not aware that I have written this 
story. I have not published it from any wish to glorify him, 
but to exert a genial influence on the hearts of others; to do 
my mite toward teaching society how to cast out the Demon 
Penalty, by the voice of the Angel Love. 



LETTER VIIL 

February, 21, 1844. 

My imagination has lately been much excited by a vivid 
account of Mammoth Cave, from a young friend who spent 
several days there. I will try to transfer to your mind, as 
well as I can, the picture he gave me 

" Of antres vast, and deserts idle, 
Rough quarries, rocks, and hills, whose heads touch heaven." 

Mammoth Cave is situated in the southwest part of Kentucky, 
about a hundred miles from Louisville, and sixty from the 
famous Harrodsburg Springs. The word cave is ill calculated 
to impress the imagination with an idea of its surpassing grand- 
eur. It is in fact a subterranean world; containing within 
itself territories extensive enough for half a score of German 
principalities. It should be named Titans' Palace, or Cyclops* 
Grotto. 

It lies among the Knobs, a range of hills, which border an 
extent of country, like highland prairies, called the Barrens. 
The surrounding scenery is lovely. Fine woods of oak, hickory^ 
and chestnut, clear of underbrush, with smooth, verdant open- 
ings, like the parks of English noblemen. 



268 LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 

The cave was purchased by Dr. John Croghan, for 10,000 
dollars. To prevent a disputed title, in case any new and 
distant opening should be discovered, he has likewise bought a 
wide circuit of adjoining land. His enthusiasm concerning it 
is unbounded. It is in fact his world; and every newly -dis- 
covered chamber fills him with pride and joy, like that felt by 
Columbus, when he first kissed his hand to the fair Queen of 
the Antilles. He has built a commodious hotel near the 
entrance, in a style well suited to the place. It is made of logs, 
filled in with lime ; with a fine large porch, in front of which 
is a beautiful verdant lawn. Near by, is a funnel-shaped hol- 
low of 300 acres; probably a cave fallen in. It is called Deer 
Park, because when those animals run in to it, they cannot 
escajDe. There are troops of wild deer in the immediate 
vicinity of the hotel ; bear-hunts are frequent, and game of all 
kinds abounds. 

Walking along the verge of this hollow, you come to a ravine, 
leading to Green Kiver, whence you command a view of what 
is supposed to be the main entrance to the cave. It is a huge 
cavernous arch, filled in with immense stones, as if giants had 
piled them there, to imprison a conquered demon. No opening 
has ever been effected here, nor is it easy to imagine that it 
could be done by the strength of man. 

In rear of the hotel is a deep ravine, densely wooded, and 
covered with luxuriant vegetable growth. It leads to Green 
River, and was probably once a water course. A narrow ravine, 
diverging from this, leads by a winding path, to the entrance 
of the cave. It is a high arch of rocks, rudely piled, and richly 
covered with ivy and tangled vines. At the top, is a perennial 
fountain of sweet and cool water, which trickles down contin- 
ually from the centre of the arch, through the pendant foliage, 
and is caught in a vessel below. The entrance of this wide 
arch is somewhat obstructed by a large mound of saltpetre, 
thrown up by workmen engaged in its manufacture, during the 
last Vv^ar. In the course of their excavations, they dug up the 
bones of a gigantic man; but unfortunately, they buried them 
again, without any memorial to mark the spot. They have 
been sought for by the curious and scientific, but are not yet 
found. 

As you come opposite the entrance of the cave, in summer, 
the temperature changes instantaneously, from about 85° to 
below 60°, and you feel chilled as if by the presence of an 



LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 269 

iceberg. In winter, the effect is reversed. The scientific have 
indulged in various speculations concerning the air of this cave. 
It is supposed to get completely fi.lled with cold winds during 
the long blasts of winter, and as there is no outlet, they remain 
pent up till the atmosphere without becomes warmer than that 
within ; when there is, of course, a continual effort toward equi- 
librium. Why the air within the cave should be so fresh, pure, 
and equable, all the year round, even in its deepest recesses, is 
not so easily explained. Some have suggested that it is con- 
tinually modified by the presence of chemical agents. What- 
ever may be the cause, its agreeable salubrity is observed by 
every visiter, and it is said to have great healing jiower in 
diseases of the lungs. 

The amount of exertion which can be performed here with- 
out fatigue, is astonishing. The superabundance of oxygen in 
the atmosphere operates like moderate doses of exhilarating gas. 
The traveller feels a buoyant sensation, which tempts him to 
run and jump, and leap from crag to crag, and bound over the 
stones in his path, like a fawn at play. The mind, moreover, 
sustains the body, being kept in a state of delightful activity, 
by continual new discoveries and startling revelations. This 
excitement continues after the return to the hotel. No one 
feels the need of cards, or politics. The conversation is all about 
the cave! The cave! And What shall we see to-morrow ? 

The wide entrance to the cavern soon contracts, so that but 
two can pass abreast. At this place, called the Narrows, the 
air from dark depths beyond blows out fiercely, as if the spirits 
of the cave had mustered there, to drive intruders back to the 
realms of day. This path continues about fourteen or fifteen 
rods, and emerges into a wider avenue, floored with saltpetre 
earth, from which the stones have been removed. Tliis leads 
directly into the Rotunda, a vast hall, comprising a surface of 
of eight acres, arched with a dome 100 feet high, without a 
single pillar to support it. It rests on irregular ribs of dark 
grey rock, in massive oval rings, smaller and smaller, one seen 
within another, till they terminate at the top. Perhaps this 
apartment im2:>resses the traveller as much as any portion of the 
cave; because from it he receives his first idea of its gigantic 
proportions. The vastness, the gloom, the impossibility of 
taking in the boundaries by the light of lamps — all these pro- 
duce a deep sensation of awe and wonder. 

From the Rotunda, you pass into Audubon's Avenue, from. 



270 LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 

80 to 100 feet liigli, with galleries of rock on each side, jutting 
out farther and farther, till they nearly meet at top. This 
avenue branches out into a vast half-oval hall, called the Church. 
This contains several projecting galleries, one of them resem- 
bling a cathedral choir. There is a gap in the gallery, and at 
the point of interruption, immediately above, is a rostrum, or 
pulpit, the rocky canopy of which juts over. The guide leaps 
up from the adjoining galleries, and places a lamp each side of 
the pulpit, on flat rocks, which seem made for the purpose. 
There has been preaching from this pulpit; but unless it was 
superior to most theological teaching, it must have been piti- 
fully discordant with the sublimity of the place. Five thousand 
people could stand in this subterranean temple with ease. 

So far, all is irregular, jagged rocks, thrown together in 
fantastic masses, without any particular style ; but now begins 
a series of imitations, which grow more and more jierfect, in 
gradual progression, till you arrive at the end. From the 
Church you pass into what is called the Gothic Gallery, from 
its obvious resemblance to that style of architecture. Here is 
Mummy Hall ; so called because several mummies have been 
found seated in recesses of the rock. Without any process of 
embalming, they were in as perfect a state of preservation, as 
the mummies of Egypt ; for the air of the cave is so dry and 
unchangeable, and so strongly imj)regnated w^ith nitre, that 
decomposition cannot take place. A mummy found here in 
1813, was the body of a woman five feet ten inches high, 
wrapped in half-dressed deer skins, on which were rudely drawn 
white veins and leaves. At the feet, lay a pair of moccasins, 
and a handsome knapsack, made of bark: containing strings of 
small shining seeds; necklaces of bear's teeth, eagle's claws and 
fawn's red hoofs; whistles made of cane; two rattlesnake's 
skins, one having on it fourteen rattles; coronets for the head, 
made of erect feathers of rooks and eagles ; smooth needles of 
horn and bone, some of them crooked like sail -needles; deer's 
sinews, for sewing, and a parcel of three-corded thread, 
resemblinor twine. I believe one of these mummies is now in 
the British Museum. 

From Mummy Hall, you pass into Gothic Avenue, where 
the resemblance to Gothic architecture very perceptibly in- 
creases. The wall juts out in pointed arches, and pillars, on 
the sides of which are various grotesque combinations of rock. 
One is an elephant's head. The tusks and sleepy eyes are 



I 



I 



LETTERS FROM XEW YORK. 271 

quite perfect; the trunk, at first very distinct, gradually recedes, 
and is lost in the rock. On another pillar is a lion's head ; on 
another, a human head vrith. a "wig, called Lord Lyndhurst, 
from its resemblance to that dignitary. 

From this gallery you can step into a side cave, in which is 
an immense pit, called the Lover's Leap. A huge rock, fourteen 
or fifteen feet lon^, like an elons^ated sus^ar-loaf runnins: to a 
sharp point, projects half way over this abyss. It makes one 
shudder to see the guide walk almost to the end of this pro- 
jectile bridge, over such an awful chasm. 

As you pass along, the Gothic Avenue narrows, until you 
come to a porch composed of the first separate columns in the 
cave. The stalactite and stalagmite formations unite in these 
in-egular masses of brownish yellow, which, when the light 
shines through them, look like transparent amber. They are 
sonorous as a clear-toned bell. A pendant mass, called the 
Bell, has been unfortunatelv broken, bv being struck too power- 
fuUy. 

The porch of columns leads to the Gothic Chapel, which has 
the cii'cular form appropriate to a true church. A number of 
pure stalactite columns fill the nave with arches, which in many 
]»laces form a perfect Gothic roof. The stalactites fall in rich 
festoons, strikingly similar to the highly ornamented chapel of 
Heniy VII. Four columns in the centre form a separate arch 
by themselves, like trees twisting into a grotto, in all irregular 
and grotesque shaj^es. Under this arch stands Wilkins' Arm- 
chaii', a stalactite formation, well adapted to the human fiorure. 
The chapel is the most beautiful specimen of Gothic in the 
cave. Two or three of the columns have richly foliated capitals, 
like the Corinthian. 

If you tui-n back to the main avenue, and strike off" in another 
direction, you enter a vast room, with several projectinor 
galleries, called the Ball Room : here the proprietor intends to 
assemble a brilliant dancing party this season. In close 
vicinity, as if arranged by the severer school of theologians, is 
a large amphitheatre called Satan's Council Chamber. From 
the centre rises a mountain of big stones, rudely piled one 
above another, in a gradual slope, nearly one hundred feet high. 
On the top rests a huge rock, big as a house, called Satan's 
Throne. The vastness, the gloom, partially illuminated by the 
glare of lamps, forcibly remind one of Lucifer on his throne, 
as represented by Martin in his illustrations of Milton. It 



272 LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 

requires little imagination to transform the uncouth rocks all 
round the throne, into attendant demons. Indeed, throughout, 
the cave, Martin's pictures are continually brought to mind, by 
the unearthly effects of intense gleams of light on black masses- 
of shadow. In this Council Chamber, the rocks, with singular 
appropriateness, change from imitation of Gothic architecture, 
to that of the Egyptian. The dark, massive walls resemble a 
series of Egyptain tombs, in dull and heavy outline. In this 
place is an angle, which forms the meeting point of several 
caves, and is therefore considered one of the finest points of 
view. Here parties usually stop and make arrangements to 
kindle the Bengal Lights, which travellers always carry with 
them. It has a strange and picturesque effect to see groups 
of people dotted about, at different points of view, their lamps 
hidden behind stones, and the light streaming into the thick 
darkness, through chinks in the rocks. When the Bengal 
Lights begin to burn, their intense radiance casts a strong 
glare on Satan's Throne ; the whole of the vast amphitheatre is. 
revealed to view, and you can peer into the deep recesses of 
two other caves beyond. For a few moments, gigantic pro- 
portions and uncouth forms stand out in the clear, strong gush 
of brilliant light ! and then — all is darkness. The effect is so 
like magic, that one almost expects to see towering genii 
striding down the deep declivities, or startled by the brilliant 
flare, shake off their long sleep among the dense black shadows. 
If you enter one of the caves revealed in the distance, you 
find yourself in a deep ravine, with huge piles of gray rock 
jutting out more and more, till they nearly meet at top. 
Looking upward, through this narrow aperture, you see, high, 
high above you, a vaulted roof of black rock, studded with 
brilliant spar, like constellations in the sky, seen at midnight,, 
from the deep clefts of a mountain. This is called the Star 
Chamber. It makes one think of Schiller's grand description 
of William Tell sternly waiting for Gessler, among the shadows 
of the Alps, and of Wordsworth's picture of 

''Yorkshire dales 
Among the rocks and winding scars ; 
Where deep and low the hamlets lie, 
Beneath their little patch of sky, 
And little lot of stars." 

In this neighbourhood is a vast, dreary chamber, which 
Stephen, tlie guide, called Bandit's Hall the first moment his^ 



LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 273 

eye rested on it ; and the name is singularly expressive of its 
character. Its rafrsred rouiihness and sullen sfloom are inde- 
scribable. The floor is a mountainous heap of loose stones, and 
not an inch of even surface could be found on roof or walls. 
Imagine two or three travellers, with their lamps, passing 
through this ])lace of evil aspect. The deep suspicious-looking 
recesses and frightful crags are but partially revealed in the 
feeble light. 

All at once, a Bengal Light blazes up, and every black rock 
and frowninor cliff stands out in the brilliant 2;lare! The 
contrast is sublime beyond imagination. It is as if a man had 
seen the hills and trees of this earth only in the dim ovitline of 
a moonless night, and they should, for the first time, be 
revealed to him in the gushing glory of the morning sun. 

But the greatest wonder in this region of the cave, is 
Mammoth Dome — a giant among giants. It is so immensely 
high and vast, that three of the most powerful Bengal Lights 
illuminate it very imperfectly. That portion of the ceiling 
"which becomes visible, is 300 feet above your head, and 
remarkably resembles the aisles of Westminster Abbey. It is 
supposed that the top of this dome is near the surface of the 
ground. 

Another route from the Devil's Council Chamber conducts 
you to a smooth, level path, called Pensacola Avenue. Here 
are numerous formations of crystallised gypsum, but not as 
beautiful or as various as are found farther on. From various 
slopes and openings, caves above and below are visible. The 
Mecca's shrine of this pilgrimage is Angelica's Grotto, com- 
pletely lined and covered with the largest and richest dog's-tooth 
spar. A person, who visited the ])lace, a few years since, laid 
his sacrilegious hands upon it, while the guide's back was turned 
towards liim. He coolly demolished a magnificent mass of 
spar, sparkling most conspicuously on the very centre of the 
arch, and wrote his own insignificant name in its place. This 
was his fashion of securing immortality ! It is well that 
fairies and giants are powerless in the nineteenth century, else 
had the indignant genii of the cave crushed his bones to 
impalpable powder. 

If you pass behind Satan's Throne, by a narrow ascending 
path, you come into a vast hall where there is nothing but 
naked rock. This empty, dreary place is appropriately called 
the Deserted Chamber. Walking along the verge, you arrive 

s 



274 LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 

at another avenue, enclosing sulphur springs. Here the guide 
warns you of the vicinity of a pit, 120 feet deep, in the shape 
of a saddle. Stooping over it, and looking upward, you see 
an abyss of precisely the same shape over your head; a fact 
which indicates that it began in the upper region, and was 
merely interrupted by this chamber. 

From this, you may enter a narrow and very tortuous path, 
called the Labyrinth, which leads to an immense split, or 
chasm, in the rocks. Here is placed a ladder, down which you 
descend twenty-five or thirty feet, and enter a narrow cave 
below, which brings you to a combination of rock called the 
Gothic Window. You stand in this recess, while the guide 
ascends huge cliffs overhead, and kindles Bengal Lights, by the 
which you see 200 feet above you, a Gotliic dome of one help of 
solid rock, perfectly overawing in its vastness and height. 
Below, is an abyss of darkness, which no eye but the Eternal 
can fathom. 

If instead of descending the ladder, you pass straight along- 
side the chasm, you arrive at the Bottomless Pit, beyond which 
no one ever ventured to proceed till 1838. To this fact we 
probably owe the meagre account given by Lieber, in his 
Encyclopaedia Americana. He says, " This cave is more 
remarkable for extent than the variety or beauty of its pro- 
ductions; having none of the beautiful stalactites found in 
many other caves." 

For a long period, this pit was considered bottomless, because, 
when stones were thrown into it, they reverberated, and 
reverberated, along the sides, till lost to the ear, but seemed to 
find no resting-place. It has since been sounded, and found to 
be 140 feet deep, with a soft muddy bottom, which returns no 
noise when a stone strikes upon it. In 1838, the adventurous 
Stephen threw a ladder across the chasm, and passed over. 
There is now a narrow bridge of two planks, with a little 
railing on each side; but as it is impossible to sustain it by 
piers, travellers must pass over in the centre, one by one, and 
not touch the railing, lest they disturb the balance, and over- 
turn the bridge. 

This walk brings you into Pensico Avenue. Hitherto, the 
path has been rugged, wild, and rough, interrupted by steep 
acclivities, rocks, and big stones; but this avenue has a smooth 
and level floor, as if the sand had been spread out by gently 
flowing waters. Through this, descending more and more, you 



LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 275 

come to a deep arch, by which you enter the ^Vinding• Way; a 
strangely irregular and zig-zag path, so narrow that a very 
stout man could not squeeze through. In some places, the 
rocks at the sides are on a line with your shoulders, then piled 
high over your head; and then again you rise above, and 
overlook them all, and see them heaped behind you like the 
mighty waves of the Red Sea, parted for the Israelites to pass 
through. This toilsome path was evidently made by a rushing, 
winding torrent. Toward the close, the water not having force 
enough to make a smooth bed, has bored a tunnel. This is so 
low and narrow, that the traveller is obliged to stoop and 
squeeze himself through. Suddenly he passes into a vast hall, 
called the Great Relief; and a relief it is to stretch one's 
cramped and weary limbs. 

This leads into the River Hall, at the side of which you 
have a glimpse of a small cave, called the Smoke House, 
because it is hung with rocks perfectly in the shape of hams. 
The River Hall descends like the slope of a mountain. The 
ceiling stretches away — away — before you, vast and grand as 
the firmament at midnight. No one, who has ever seen this 
cave, can imagine the feelings of strong excitement and deep 
awe with which the traveller keeps his eye fixed on the rocky 
ceiling, which, gradually revealed in the passing light, con- 
tinually exhibits some new and unexpected feature of sub- 
limity or beauty. 

One of the most picturesque sights in the world, is to see 
a file of men and women passing along these wild and scraggy 
paths, moving slowly — slowly — that their lamps may have time 
to illuminate the sky-like ceiling, and gigantic walls; dis- 
appearing behind the high cliffs, sinking into ravines, their 
lights shining upward through fissures in the rocks; then 
suddenly emerging from some abrupt angle, standing in the 
bright gleam of their lamps, relieved against the towering black 
masses around them. He who could paint the infinite variety 
of creation, can alone give an adequate description of this 
marvellous region. 

At one side of River Hall is a steep precipice, over which 
you can look down, by aid of blazing missiles, upon a broad, 
black sheet of water, eighty feet below, called the Dead Sea. 
This is an awfully impressive place, the sights and sounds of 
which do not easily pass from memory. He who has seen it 
will have it vividly brought before him by Alfieri's description 



276 LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 

of Filippo: ''Only a transient word or act gives us a short 
and dubious glimmer, that reveals to us the abysses of his 
being; dark, lurid, and terrific, as the throat of the infernal 
pool." 

As you pass along, you hear the roar of invisible water-falls, 
and at the foot of the slope, the Hiver Styx lies before you, 
deep and black, over-arched with rock. The first glimpse of it 
brings to mind the descent of Ulysses into hell. 

' ' Where the dark rock o'erhangs the infernal lake, 
And mingling streams eternal murmurs make." 

Across these unearthly waters, the guide can convey but two 
passengers at once; and these sit motionless in the canoe, with 
feet turned apart, so as not to disturb the balance. Three 
lamps are fastened to the prow, the images of which are 
reflected in the dismal pool. 

If you are impatient of delay, or eager for new adventures, 
you can leave your companions lingering about the shore, and 
cross the Styx by a dangerous bridge of precipices overhead. 
In order to do this, you must ascend a steep cliif and enter a 
cave above, from an egress of which yon find yourself on the 
bank of the river, eighty feet above its surface, commanding a 
view of those passing in the boat, and those Avaiting on the 
shore. Seen from this height, the lamps in the canoe glare 
like fiery eyeballs; and the passengers sitting there, so hushed 
and motionless, look like shadows. The scene is so strangely 
funereal and spectral, that it seems as if the Greeks must have 
witnessed it, before they imagined Charon conveying ghosts to 
the dim regions of Pluto. Your companions, thus seen, do 
indeed 

"Skim along the dusky glades, 
Thin airy shoals, and visionary shades." 

If you turn your eye from the canoe, to the parties of men 
and women, whom you left waiting on the shore, you will see 
them, by the gleam of their lamps, scattered in picturesque 
groups, looming out in bold relief from the dense darkness 
around them. 

When you have passed the Styx, you soon meet another 
stream, appropriately called liethe. The echoes here are ab- 
solutely stunning. A single voice sounds like a powerful choir; 
and could an organ be played, it would deprive the hearer of 
Ills senses. When you have crossed, you enter a high level 



LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 277 

hall, named the Great Walk, half a mile of which brings you to 
another river, called the Jordan. In crossing this, the rocks, 
in one place, descend so low, as to leave only eighteen inches 
for the boat to pass through. Passengers are obliged to double 
up, and lie on each other's shoulders, till this gap is passed. 
This uncomfortable position is, however, of short duration, and 
jou suddenly emerge to where the vault of the cave is more 
than a hundred feet high. In the fall of the year, this river 
often rises, almost instantaneously, over fifty feet above low 
vi^ater mark; a phenomenon supposed to be caused by heavy 
rains from the upper earth. On this ac30unt, autumn is an unfav- 
ourable season for those who wish to explore the cave through- 
out. If parties happen to be caught on the other side of Jordan, 
when the sudden rise takes place, a boat conveys them, on the 
swollen waters, to the level of an upper cave, so low that they 
are obliged to enter on hands and knees, and crawl through. 
This place is called Purgatory. People on the other side, aware 
of their danger, have a boat in readiness to receive them. 

The guide usually sings while crossing the Jordan, and his 
voice is reverberated by a choir of sweet echoes. The only 
animals ever found in the cave are fish, with which this stream 
abounds. They are perfectly white, and without eyes ; at least, 
they have been subjected to a careful scientific examination, 
and no organ similar to an eye can be discovered. It would 
indeed be a useless appendage to creatures that dwell forever 
in Cimmerian darkness. Bat, as usual, the acuteness of one 
sense is increased by the absence of another. These fish are 
undisturbed by the most powerful glare of light, but they are 
alarmed at the slightest agitation of the water; and it is there- 
fore exceedingly difficult to catch them. 

The rivers of Mammoth Cave were never crossed till 1840. 
Great efi'orts have been made to discover whence they come, 
and whither they go. Bat though the courageous Stephen has 
floated for hours up to his chin, and forced his way through the 
narrowest apertures under the dark waves, so as to leave merely 
his head a breathing space, yet they still remain as much a 
mystery as ever — without beginning or end, like eternity. They 
disappear under arches, which, even at the lowest stage of the 
water, are under the surface of it. 

From some unknown cause, it sometimes happens in the 
neighbourhood of these streams, that the figure of a distant 
companion will apparently loom up, to the height of ten or 



278 LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 

twelve feet, as he approaches you. This occasional phenomenon 
is somewhat frightful, even to the most rational observer, occur- 
ring as it does in a region so naturally associated with giants 
and genii. 

From the Jordan, through Sillima's Avenue, you enter a 
high, narrow defile, or pass, in a portion of which, called the 
Hanging Rocks, huge masses of stone hang suspended over your 
head. At the side of this defile, is a recess, called the Devil's 
Blacksmith's Shop. It contains a rock shaped like an anvil, 
with a small inky current running near it, and quantities of 
coarse stalagmite scattered about, precisely like blacksmith's 
cinders, called slag. In another place, you pass a square rock, 
covered with beautiful dog's-tooth spar, called the Mile Stone. 

This pass brings you into Wellington's Gallery, which tapers 
off* to a narrow point, apparently the end of the cave in this 
direction. But a ladder is placed on one side by which you 
ascend to a small cleft in the rock, through which you are at 
once ushered into a vast apartment, discovered about two years 
ago. This is the commencement of Cleveland's Avenue, the 
crowning wonder and glory of this subterranean world ! At 
the head of the ladder, you find j^ourself surrounded by over- 
hanging stalactites, in the form of rich clusters of grapes, trans- 
parent to the light, hard as marble, and round and polished, 
as if done by a sculptor's hand. This is called Mary's Vine- 
yard. 

From the Vineyard, an entrance to the right brings you into 
a perfectly naked cave, whence you suddenly jDass into a large 
hall, with magnificent columns, and rich festoons of stalactite, 
in various forms of beautiful combination. In the centre of 
this chamber, between columns of stalactite, stands a mass of 
stalagmite, shaped like a sarcophagus, in which is an opening 
like- a grave. A Roman Catholic priest first discovered this, 
about a year ago, and with fervent enthusiasm exclaimed, "The 
Holy Sepulchre !" a name which it has since borne. 

To the left of Mary's Vineyard, is an enclosure like an arbour, 
the ceiling and sides of which are studded with white-snow 
crystallised gyj^sum, in the form of all sorts of flowers. It is 
impossible to convey an idea of the exquisite beauty and infinite 
variety of these delicate formations. In some places, roses and 
lilies seem cut on the rock, in bas-relief; in others, a graceful 
bell rises on a long stalk, so slender that it bends at a breath. 
One is an admirable imitation of Indian corn in tassel, the silky 



LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 279 

libres as fine and flexile as can be imagined; another is a group 
of ostrich plumes, so downy that a zephyr waves it. In some 
nooks were little parks of trees, in others, gracefully curled 
leaves like the Acanthus, rose from the very bosom of the rock. 
Near this room is the Snow Chamber, the roof and sides of 
which are covered with particles of brilliant white gypsum, as 
if snow-balls had been dashed all oyer the walls. In another 
apartment the crystals are all in form of rosettes. In another, 
called Rebecca's Garland, the flowers have all arranged them- 
selves into wreaths. Each seems to have a style of formations 
peculiar to itself, though of infinite variety. Days might be 
spent in these superb grottoes, without becoming familiar with 
half their hidden o-lories. One could ima2:ine that some antedilu- 
vian giant had here imprisoned some fair daughter of earth, 
and then in pity for her loneliness, had emj)loyed fairies to 
deck her bowers with all the splendour of earth and ocean, 
like poor Amy Robsart, in the solitary halls of Cumnor. 
Bengal Lights, kindled in these beautiful retreats, produce an 
efiect more gorgeous than any theatrical representation of fairy- 
land; but they smoke the pure white incrustations, and the 
guide is therefore very properly reluctant to have them used. 
The reflection from the shining walls is so strong, that lamp- 
light is quite sufficient. Moreover, these wonderful formations 
need to be examined slowly, and in detail. The universal 
glitter of Bengal Lights is worthless in comparison. 

From Rebecca's Garland you come into a vast hall, of great 
height, covered with shining drops of gypsum, like oozing water 
petrified. In the centre is a large rock, four feet high, and 
level at top, round which several hundred people can sit 
conveniently. This is called Cornelia's Table, and is frequently 
used for parties to dine upon. In this hall, and in Wellington's 
Gallery, are deposits of fibrous gypsum, snow-white, dry, and 
resembling asbestos. Geologists, who sometimes take up their 
abode in the cave for weeks, and other travellers who choose to 
remain over night, find this a very pleasant and comfortable 
bed. 

Cornelia's Table is a safe centre, from which individuals may 
diverge on little exploring expeditions ; for the paths here are 
not labyrinthine, and the hall is conspicuous from various 
neighbouring points of view. In most regions of the cave, it is 
hazardous to lose sight of the guide. If you think to walk 
straight ahead, even for a few rods, and then turn sliort round 



280 LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 

and return to him, you will find it next to impossible to do so. 
So many paths come in at acute angles; they look so much 
alike ; and the light of a lamp reveals them so imperfectly, that 
none but the practised eye of a guide can disentangle their 
windings. A gentleman who retraced a few steps, near the 
entrance of the cave, to find his hat, lost his way so completely, 
that he was not found for forty-eight hours, though twenty or 
thirty people were in search of him. Parties are occasionally 
mustered and counted, to see that none are missing. Should 
such an accident happen, there is no danger, if the wanderer 
wdll remain stationary; for he will soon be missed, and a guide 
sent after him. 

From the hall of congealed drops, you may branch off into a 
succession of small caves, called Cecilia's Grottoes. Here 
nearly all the beautiful formations of the surrounding caves, 
such as grapes, flowers, stars, leaves, coral, &c., may be found 
so low, that you can conveniently examine their minutest 
features. — One of these little recesses, covered with sparkling 
spar, set in silvery gypsum, is called Diamond Grotto. Alma's 
Bower closes this series of wonderful formations. As a whole, 
they are called Cleveland's Cabinet, in honour of Professor 
Cleveland, of Bowdoin College. 

Silliman, in his American Journal of Science and Art, calls 
this admirable series, the Alabaster Caves. He says : '' I was 
at first at a loss to account for such beautiful formations, and 
especially for the elegance of the curves exhibited. It is, 
however, evident that the substances have grown from the 
rocks, by increments or additions to the base; the solid parts 
already formed being continually pushed forward. If the 
growth be a little more rapid on one side than on the other, a 
well-proportioned curve will be the result ; should the increased 
action on one side diminish or increase, then all the beauties 
of the conic and mixed curves would be produced. The 
masses are often evenly and longitudinally striated by a kind 
of columnar structure, exhibiting a fascicle of small prisms ; 
and some of these prisms ending sooner than others, give a 
broken termination of great beauty, similar to our form of the 
emblem of ' the order of the star.' The rosettes formed by a 
mammillary disk surrounded by a circle of leaves, rolled 
elegantly outward, are from four inches to a foot in diameter. 
Tortuous vines, throwing off curled leaves at every flexure, like 
the branches of a chandelier, running more than a foot in 



LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 281 

length, and not thicker than the finger, are among the varied 
frost-work of these grottoes ; common stahictites of carbonate of 
lime, although beautiful objects, lose by contrast with these 
ornaments, and dwindle into mere clumsy, awkward icicles. 
Besides these, there are tufts of 'hair salt,' native sulphate of 
magnesia, depending like adhering snowballs from the roof, 
and periodically detaching themselves by their own increasing 
weight. Indeed, the more solid alabaster ornaments become at 
last overgrown, and fall upon the floor of the grotto, which was 
found covered with numbers quite entire, besides fragments of 
others broken by the fall." 

A distinguished geologist has said that he believed Cleve- 
land's Avenue, two miles in length, contained a petrified form 
of every vegetable production on earth. If this be too large a 
statement, it is at least safe to say that its variety is almost 
infinite. Amongst its other productions, are large piles of 
Epsom salts, beautifully crystallised. Travellers have shown 
such wanton destructiveness in this great temple of Nature — 
mutilating beautiful columns, knocking off spar, and crushing 
delicate flowers — that the rules are now very strict. It is 
allowable to touch nothing except the ornaments which have 
loosened and dropped by their own weight. These are often 
hard enough to bear transportation. 

After you leave Alma's Bower, the cave again becomes very 
rugged. Beautiful combinations of gypsum and spar may still 
be seen occasionally overhead ; but all round you rocks and 
stones are piled up in the wildest manner. Through such 
scraggy scenery, you come to the Rocky Mountains, an irregu- 
lar pile of massive rocks, from 100 to 150 feet high. From 
these you can look down into Dismal Hollow — deep below deep 
— the most frightful looking place in the whole cave. On the 
top of the mountain is a beautiful rotunda, called Croghan 
Hall, in honour of the proprietor. Stalactites surround this in 
the richest fringe of icicles, and lie scattered about the walls 
in all shapes, as if arranged for a museum. On one side is a 
stalagmite formation like a pine-tree, about five feet high, with 
regular leaves and branches ; another is in a pyramidal form, 
like a cypress. 

If you wind down the mountains on the side opposite from 
that which you ascended, you will come to Serena's Arbour, 
which is thirteen miles from the entrance of the cave, and the 
■end of this avenue. A most beautiful termination it is ! In a 



282 LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 

semicircle of stalactite columns is a fountain of pure water 
spouting u]) from a rock. This fluid is as transparent as air ; 
all the earthly particles it ever held in suspension, having been 
long since jDrecipitated. — The stalactite formations in this 
arbour are remarkably beautiful. 

One hundred and sixty-five avenues have been discovered in 
Mammoth Cave, the walk through which is estimated at about 
three hundred miles. In some places, you descend more than 
a mile into the bowels of the earth. The poetic-minded travel- 
ler, after he has traced all the labyrinths, departs with lingering 
reluctance. As he approaches the entrance, daylight greets 
him with new and startling beauty. If the sun shines on the 
verdant sloping hill, and the waving trees, seen through the 
arch, they seem like fluid gold ; if mere daylight rests upon 
them, they resemble molten silver. This remarkable richness 
of apjDearance is doubtless owing to the contrast with the thick 
darkness, to which the eye has been so long accustomed. 

As you come out of the cave the temperature of the air rises 
thirty degrees instantly (if the season is summer), and you feel 
as if plunged in a hot vapour bath ; but the eftects of this are 
salutary and not unpleasant. 

Nature never seems so miraculous as it does when you 
emerge from this hidden realm of marvellous imitations. The 
"dear goddess" is so serene in her resplendent and harmonious 
beauty ! The gorgeous amphitheatre of trees, the hills, the sky^ 
and the air, all seem to wear a veil of transfigured glory. The 
traveller feels that he was never before conscious how beautiful 
a phenomenon is the sunlight, how magnificent the blue arch 
of heaven ! 

There are three guides at the service of travellers, all well 
versed in the intricate paths of this nether world. Stephen, 
the presiding genius of Mammoth Cave, is a mulatto, and a 
slave. He has lived in this strange region from boyhood, and 
a large proportion of the discoveries are the result of his cour- 
age, intelligence, and untiring zeal. His vocation has brought 
him into contact with many intellectual and scientific men, and 
as he has great quickness of perception, and a prodigious 
memory, he has profited much by intercourse with suj)erior 
minds. He can recollect everybody that ever visited the cave, 
and all the terms of geology and mineralogy are at his tongue's 
end. He is extremely attentive, and peculiarly polite to ladies. 
Like most of his race, he is fond of grandiloquent language. 



LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 283 

and his rapturous expressions, as he lights up some fine point 
of view, are at times line specimens of glorification. His 
knowledge of the place is ample and accurate, and he is alto- 
gether an extremely useful and agreeable guide. May his last 
breath be a free one ! 



LETTER IX. 

March 15, 1844. 

March is playing its usual tricks. For the first fortnight, we 
had such genial, brilliant weather, that June seemed to have 
come to us by mistake. This early sjjring influence always 
fills me with gladness. A buoyant principle of life leaps up in 
my soul, like sap in the trees. I feel the greatest desire of 
" dancing with the whole world," as Frederika Bremer says. 
To be sure, these bright, sunny days do make me feel a little 
impatient with bricks and paving stones. Now and then, 
there comes over me a yearning vision of Mary Howitt's wood- 
mouse, eating his chestnut under the canopy of a mushroom ; 
and I wish that the world would give me as fair a life-lease of 
food and shelter in the green fields. But — 

' ' Out upon the calf, I say, 
Who turns his grumbling head aM'ay, 
And quarrels with his feed of hay, 
Because it isn't clover. 

Give to me the happy mind, 
That will ever seek and find 
Something good and something kind, 
All the wide world over." 

Why need I sigh for green fields 1 Does not Broadway 
superabound with beauty ? Forth went I into the sunshine. 
The doves were careering about the liberty-poles, showing the 
silver lining of their breasts and wings to the morning light. 
The little Canary birds sang so joyously, that one forgot, for the 
moment, that they were confined in cages. Young girls were 
out in the morning breeze, making the side-walk like a hedge 
of blush-roses. In the magnificent stores of Broadway, rich rib- 
bons and silks shone like a parterre of tulips in the Netherlands. 
Through the large windows, beautiful candelabras gracefully 
held out their lily-cups of frosted silver, and prismatic show^ers 
of cut glass were upborne by Grecian sylphs, or knights of the 



284 LETTERS FROM NEW YORK 

middle ages, in golden armour. T often gaze at the rich array, 
delighting in beauty for its own sake. I look at them, as I do 
at the stars and the forests, without the slightest wish to appro- 
priate them, and with the feeling that OA'ery human being ought 
to enjoy the fairest creations of Art, as freely as the sunlight 
and the star-glory, which our Father gives to all. 

Thinking thus, I came in sight of the Park Fountain, leap- 
ing up joyously into the morning air. The sun, climbing over 
the roofs, had just touched it, and completely covered it with a 
mantle of rainbows. It was so gloriously beautiful, that I in- 
voluntarily uttered a cry of joy. And this, thought I, is a 
universal gift. Prismatic chandeliers and flowers of frosted 
silver may be shut up in princely saloons, guarded by sherift 
and police ; but what jeweller can produce anything so superbly 
beautiful as this silvery spray, and these glancing rainbows 1 
For the labourer returning from daily toil to his narrow and 
crowded home, here is a wayside vision of freedom, of beauty, 
and of joy. Who can calculate how much it cools and refreshes 
his fevered and fettered soul "? There are those who inquire 
what was the use of expending so much money for something 
to look at '? Alas for them ! for they know not that " a thing 
of beauty is a joy for ever." 

Some speak disparagingly of this superb jet cVeau because 
there are no water-nymphs, or marble urns. They mistake the 
usual accessories of a fountain for the thing itself, as they do 
not recognise a man, unless he stands in a stylish coat. But 
for myself, I like the simj^licity of the greensward, and the 
water in its own unadorned gracefulness. If I must live in a 
city, the fountains alone would determine my choice in favour 
of New-York. 

I found the Battery unoccupied, save by children, whom the 

weather made as merry as birds. Everything seemed moving 

to the vernal tune of 

' ' Brignal banks are fresh and fair, 
And Greta woods are green." 

To one who was chasing her hoop, I said, smiling, " You are 
a nice little girl." She stopped, looked up in my face, so rosy 
and happy, and laying her hand on her brother's shoulder, ex- 
claimed earnestly, " And he is a nice little boy, too !" It was 
a simple, childlike act, but it brought a warm gush into my 
heart. Blessings on all unselfishness ! On all that leads us in 
love to prefer one another. Here lies the secret of universal 



LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 285 

harmony ; this is tlie diapason, which would bring us all into 
tune. Only by losing ourselves can we find ourselves. How 
clearly does the divine voice within us proclaim this, by the 
hymn of joy it sings, wherever we witness an unselfish deed, 
or hear an unselfish thoucrht. Blessinfrs on that loving little 
one I She made the city seem a garden to me. I kissed my 
hand to her, as I turned ofi^ in quest of the Brooklyn ferry. 
The sparkling waters swarmed with boats, some of which had 
taken a big ship by the hand, and were leading her out to sea,, 
as the prattle of childhood often guides wisdom into the deepest 
and broadest thought. 

A few moments of bounding, billowy motion, and the ferry- 
boat touched the Brooklyn pier. This place is a pleasant con- 
trast to the swarminsc hive of New- York ; for though laid out 
in streets, and calling itself a city, there are open spaces, and 
breezy heights, and pasture land, and cows. 

In a conservatory here, I found a teacher, who said more to 
me than sermons often do. It was a luxuri^int rhododendron, 
covered with blossoms. When some one, in passing, shook it 
roughly, it scattered a shower of honey-dew from its roseate 
cups, and immediately began to fill its chalices anew with trans- 
parent ambrosia. For a few days past, I had been a little vexed 
with the world for its rude thoughtlessness ; but I took a lesson 
of the rhododendron, to shower sweetness on hands that dis- 
turbed me, and to fill anew with pure honey-drops the chalices 
of my inward thought. 

Before I had returned to the city, capricious March had 
taken the sulks, and whistled through me, as if it came from a 
thousand icebergs. But though the troop of children had all 
scampered from the Battery, and the waters looked turbid and 
cold, the joyous little hoop-driver had left in my memory her 
sunny face and lovincr tones. 



LETTER X. 

March 29, 1844. 

My friend, why do you write so despondingly 1 Is it a wise,. 
a beautiful, or a useful mission, to throw a wet blanket on all 
enthusiasm and hope ? The influences of the age do this more 
than enough to preserve the balance of things. Let us be of 



286 LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 

the few, who diligently keep the sacred fire from going out on 
the altar. 

There have always been a large class of thinkers who deny 
that the world makes any progress. They say we move in a 
circle ; that evils are never conquered, but only change their 
forms. In proof of this doctrine, they remind us that the many 
are now as effectually kept in subjection to the few, by commer- 
cial fraud and diplomatic cunning, as they once were by sword 
and battle-axe. This class of reasoners are uncomfortable to 
the lio])eful soul ; the more so, because they can easily bring 
forward an array of facts, from which, in the very nature of the 
case, it is impossible to evolve the good and evil separately, to 
weigh them accurately, and justly determine the results of each 
on the whole destiny of man. These unbelievers point to the 
past, whose records are deeply graven, and seen of all men, 
though they relate only to the externals of human history ; 
while those who believe in perj^etual progress found their faith 
mainly on the inward growth and unwritten history of the soul. 
They see within all events a spiritual essence, subtle, expansive, 
and noiseless as light ; and from the roseate gleam resting on 
the horizon^s edge, they predict that the sun will rise to its 
zenith, and veil the Avhole earth in transfigured glory. 

It is the mission of the prophet to announce, rather than to 
prove ; yet facts are not wanting to prove that mankind have 
made progress. Experience is not always at discord with hope ; 
perhaps it is never so, if we could read history as the Omnisci- 
ent reads it. Doubtless the world does move in circles, and 
good and evil, reproduced in new forms, bear a continued 
check-and-balance relation to each other. But the circles in 
which we move rise in a perpetually ascending series, and evil 
will finally be overcome with good. The very fierceness of the 
conflict shows that this consummation is approaching. There 
never was a time when good and evil, truth and falsehood, 
were at work with such miraculous activity. To those who 
look on the surface, it may seem as if the evil and the false were 
gaining the victory, because the evil and the false are always 
more violent and tumultuous than the good and the true. The 
tornado blusters, and the atmosphere is still ; but the atmo- 
sphere j^i'oduces and sustains a thousand fold more than the 
tornado destroys. The good and the true work for eternity in 
a golden silence. 

The very uproar of evil, at the present time, is full of 



LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 287 

promise; for all evil must be made manifest, that it may be 
cured. To this end Divine Providence is continually exerted 
both in the material and the spiritual world. If the right 
proportions of the atmosphere are disturbed, the discords 
manifests itself in thunder and lightning, and thus is harmony 
restored. To the superstitious it sounds like the voice of 
wrath, but it is only Universal Love restoring order to the 
elements. 

Behind the cause lies the end; and that is, evil in the soul 
of man. He it is who disturbs the balance of the elements, 
and his sins are uttered in thunder and storm. But the 
mamfestatlon is ever healthy, and the precursor of restored 
harmony. Welcome then, to such books as Oliver Twist and 
the Mysteries of Paris; welcome to all the painful unfoldings 
of Anti-slavery, Temperance and Prison Associations; to all 
that, in a spirit friendly to man, lays open the crimes, the vices, 
and the harshness of society. I hail this universal tendency to 
manifestation as a joyful omen. 

Dost thou ask, oh, unbelieving reader, for proof that the 
world Jtas made progress ; Consider well the great fact of 
British emancipation in the West Indies. Show me another 
instance in the world's history, where the heart of a whole 
nation was kindled, as it were, by a divine flame, to right the 
wrongs of a distant and helpless people. A people too poor to 
repay their benefactors ; nay, for whose sake the benefactors 
taxed themselves heavily. A people too low and vulgar, in 
their utter degradation, to cast the faintest gleam of romance 
over the sympathy which came to their rescue. Could this deed 
have been done under the influence of any other religion than 
the Christian ? Was anything done in the preceding ages to 
be compared to it for moral grandeur] Great and glorious 
actions were doubtless performed by those old Greeks and 
Komans, and knights of the Middle Ages; but show me one so 
transcendently unselfish — one in which a nation acted from so 
pure a sentiment of justice, untarnished by the acquisition of 
wealth, or fame, or power. It has been well said, that "We 
seek history in vain for the results of honesty, justice and 
kindness, as exemplified in the dealings of nation toward nation ; 
or in the conduct of the mighty and powerful toward the 
defenceless and the weak. It was reserved for England to 
furnish this missing chapter in the history of the world — this 
unlimned picture in the Gallery of Time." 



288 LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 

It has been asserted that the British Government did this as> 
a skilful move in the game of nations. I wish I could believe 
such speech had no worse origin than ignorance of facts. The 
British Government finds an increase of power in the grand 
moral position it has taken on the subject of slavery; but thev 
had no faith that such would be the result. " Honesty is the 
best policy, but policy without honesty never finds that out." 
Therefore, the applications of great moral truths to the con- 
dition of man is never discovered by governments. Such 
perceptions come in the stillness to individual souls, and thence 
2"lide throuffh the social fabric. At last a nation hails them as 
holy, and the moral power of a people compels government to 
adopt them, though with a growling disbelief in their efficacy. 
The good done by diplomatists and politicians is effected by the 
constraining force of public opinion : the bad they do is their 
own. This is the history of all amelioration in law ; and it is 
eminently true with regard to British emancipation. The 
ruling powers resisted it as long as they could; but the fire 
kindled in the heart and conscience of the nation grew hotter 
and hotter. Government had sufficient sagacity to foresee that 
the boilers would burst, unless a safety-valve were supplied. 
When petitions grew so bulky that it required six men to carry 
them into Parliament, legislators began to say, "It is not safe 
for us to procrastinate longer. When 800,000 even of the 
women of England are knocking at our door, there is no more 
time for delay." Thus it was that government yielded up its 
cold and selfish policy, a sacrifice on the altar of a nation's 
heart. 

Do you remind me of slavery in other parts of the British 
empire'? Of slavery in her own factories and mines'? I tell 
you the divine fire, which burnt off the fetters of the negro 
slave, cast its light clearly and strongly on other wrongs. 
The deepest corner of those dark and dismal mines stands fully 
revealed to the public gaze in the gleam of that holy flame ; 
and it has already consumed the cord which bound the East 
Indian in British slavery. 

If you are ignorant of these facts, thank the jealousy and 
conscious guilt of the American press. Our editors have 
carefully concealed the progress of emancipation, and its blessed 
results, while they have diligently sought for stories of insurrec- 
tion, to sustain the detestable theory that God made one-half 
of his children to be slaves to the other half. The much- 



LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 289 

desired insurrections never occurred. The negroes were too 
grateful and too docile to realise our republican hopes ; and in 
lieu of fire and blood, our editors are constrained to make the 
most they can of the diminished production of sugar. As if the 
eternal truths contained in our own Declaration of Independence 
could be changed, or modified, by the sweetening of our tea! 

Few facts are more disgraceful to the American press than 
the manner in which West India emancipation has been treated. 
Deep indeed must this country have been sunk in prejudice and 
sin, to have received these glad tidings of regenerated humanity, 
with such obvious coldness and aversion. Had we been sincere 
in our j)rofessed love of freedom, instead of jealous inuendoes 
and evil anguries, we should have sung to England a chorus of 
joy and praise, such as angels utter over a sinner that repenteth. 

But let us turn again to proofs of the world's progress. 
Look at the glorious position of Ireland ! Where can you find 
moral grandeur to be compared to it, in the history of nations? 
A people trampled on for generations, and therefore ignorant 
and violent — a people proverbially impulsive, bold, and 
reckless, stand before the imposing array of British power, and 
say, as William Penn did, when threatened with imprisonment 
in the Tower, "Well, friend, thy strength shall never equal my 
patience." Their oppressors, learned in the operations of brute 
force, arrest the Irish Liberator on the day of a great Bepeal 
gathering, when the populace are out in masses, and under the 
influence of strong excitement. Having cannon and troops in 
readiness, they seize O'Connell, nothing doubting that a storm 
of stones and shillelahs will give them a specious pretext for 
placing Ireland under military control. But lo ! neither heads 
nor laws are broken ! The British Government stands check- 
mated by the simple pi'inciple of peace. O'Connell has assured 
the Irish people that moral power is mightier than physical force ; 
and they, with their strong hands, and hearts burning with a sense 
of accumulated wrongs, believe the words he has so wisely ut- 
tered. Here is a knot for diplomatists, a puzzle for politicians I 
Swords will not cut it, cannon cannot shatter it, fire will not 
burn it. It is a power that transcends governments, and govern- 
ments must surrender before its unconquered Majesty. 

Perhaps you will say that O'Connell acts only from policy, as 
statesmen and generals have done before him. But does it 
mark no progress, that a man, who sways millions to his will, 
perceives this to be the best policy 1 Is there no encouragement 

T 



290 LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 

in the fact that the most excitable and turbulent of people 
believe the word he has siDokenl Could the Irish have attained 
to this wonderful self-command, if Father Mathew had not 
prepared them for the work? The Law of Temperance has 
made a pathway in the desert for the Law of Love, and the 
forces of the millennium are marching in, bearing on their ban- 
ners, "Friends, thy strength shall never equal my patience." 

Duelling, strongly sustained as it has been, and still is, by 
the pride and passions of men, is gradually passing into disre- 
pute. More and more, men dare to brand him as the real 
coward who yields the good instincts of his heart, and the 
honest convictions of his own soul, to an erroneous popular 
opinion. Even South Carolina, the land of pistol chivalry, is 
beginning to rebuke the bloody folly. In this, too, O'Connell's 
example is great, though not blameless. The force of public 
oj)inion, and the persevering insolence of political opponents 
once drove him into a duel. He had shot the man that had 
long boasted that he would rid the country of him. But his 
noble nature rose against the murderous deed, and he dared to 
obey its dictates. He settled a generous pension on the widow 
of his enemy, and took a solemn oath, which he caused to be 
recorded, that he would never again fight a duel, under any 
provocation. Repeated efforts have been made to provoke 
him into a violation of his promise ; but in answer to all 
challenges, he calmly returns a record of his oath. Assuredly, 
the good seed scattered by the preaching of George Fox, and 
the courageous meekness of his disciples, have brought forth 
frviit an hundred fold. 

Those must be blind indeed who see no signs of moral and 
intellectual growth in the extended sphere of woman's useful- 
ness, and the high standard of female character. A woman as 
well educated as half the mechanics' daughters in our country, 
would have been pointed at as a prodigy a century ago. It is 
astonishing what a moderate knowledge of science or literature 
then passed for prodigious learning. A woman who had 
written a book was wondered at, and feared ; and judicious 
mothers cautioned their daughters not to follow such an 
eccentric example, lest they should lose all chance of getting 
husbands. Now, books from the pens of women, and some of 
them excellent books too, are poured forth by hundreds, and 
no one considers the fact a remarkable one. Nor have women 
lost in refinement and usefulness what they have gained in 



LETTERS FROM NEW YORK, 291 

knowledge and power. In the transition state of society, 
it is true that learned women generally became awkward 
})edants ; but at the present time, women of the deepest 
philosophical insight, and the most varied learning, are emi- 
nently characterised by practical usefulness, and the domestic 
virtues. 

Observe the fast increasing odium attached to capital punish- 
ment. Even its defenders argue for it, as men do for slavery 
and war, with the plea of necessity, and with an ill -concealed 
consciousness that their utterance is at discord with the maxims 
of Christ. The governor of Vermont lately recommended the 
legislature of that state to repeal the law, which ordained that 
no man should be hung till a year after being sentenced ; but 
instead of following his advice, they prolonged the term to 
fifteen months. Maine has passed a similar law. 

Some years ago, in a small work on education, called "The 
Mother's Book,^' I recommended that a child should never be 
whipt in anger. A relative said to me, '' I should be ashamed 
of myself if I could whip my child when I was not angry." At 
the time, I thought the remark a foolish one ; for I had then 
some faith in physical coercion to effect moral good ; but I now 
see that the mother's instincts were wiser than mine, thouirh 
they did not lead her to wise conclusions. Few parents could 
whip a child a week after the oflence was committed ; and 
states will find it difficult to hang criminals, a year after the 
excitement of the trial has passed away. In process of time, 
the prisons themselves will furnish no one hardened enough to 
perform the ofiice of a hangman ; and no clergymen will be 
found so blinded to the true mission of Christianity, as to pray 
on a drum-head for success in blowing the souls of human 
brethren out of their bodies with bomb-shells ; or to stand 
under the gallows and pray for beneficial effects from legalised 
murder. 

' ' Thank God that I have lived to see the time, 
When the great truth begins at last to find 
An utterance from the deep heart of mankind, 
Earnest and clear, that all revenge is crime ! 
That man is holier than a creed ; that all 
Restraint upon him must consult his good ; 
Hope's sunshine linger on his prison wall. 
And Love look in upon his solitude. 
The beautiful lesson which our Saviour taught. 
Through long dark centuries its way hath wrought 
Into the common mind and popular thought ; 



292 



LETTERS FKOM NEW YORK. 



And words to which, by Galilee's lake shore, 
The humble fishers listened with hushed oar. 
Have found an echo in the general heart, 
And of the public faith become a living part." 

It is true that, in this age of intellectual analysis, cunning 
has, in a great measure, taken the place of force, and with 
disastrous results Still, the society that is governed by intel- 
lect, however much perverted from its true use, is in advance 
of society governed by club and battle axe. But from the 
present state of things men are obviously passing into better 
order. The transition is certainly a restless and painful one ; 
but there is everything to hope from the fact that the secrets 
of fraud and cunning are so universally laid open, and that 
men are calling more and more loudly for something better to 
supersede them. Not in vain did Fourier patiently investi- 
gate, for thirty years, the causes of social evils and their 
remedy. Not in vain are communities starting up all around 
us, varied in plan, but all born of one idea. Do you say they 
will never be able to realise their aspirations'? Aw^ay with 
your scepticism ! I tell you that, if they all die, they will not 
perisli without leaving the seed of great social truths scattered 
on the hill-sides and in the valleys ; and the seed Avill spring 
up and wave in a golden harvest. God does not thus mock 
with false hopes tlie beings He has made in his 'own image. 
He has taught us to pray that his kingdom may come on 
earth, as it is in heaven ; and He will answer the prayer in 
glorious fulfilment. 



LETTER XL 



April 7, 1844. 



It is curious to observe the number of things continually 
crowding on the over-taxed attention of a large city : the 
efforts of the individual to be seen above the mass ; to be 
acknowledged as an entity in the human ocean. In Broadway, 
there walks here and there an ultraist of fashion, of whom 
one is tempted to ask, as did Jane Taylor's simple little girl: — 

* ' What naughty tricks pray has she done, 
That they have put a fool's cap on ? " 



LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 293 

Anotlier segment of the social circle presents men preaching 
vociferously from cart-wheels, at the corners of the streets j 
men in dust -coloured garments, with beards descending to their 
girdles ; here an individual with a large glittering breastplate, 
inscribed with texts of Scripture ; and there another, with shirt 
worn outward, like a frock, and a large cross blazoned thereon. 

These eccentric characters, which abound in our time, 
are among the many curious indications of rapid changes 
going over the old prejudices and opinions of society. 
"When the pressure of the atmosphere, to which we have 
been accustomed, either materially or spiritually, is par- 
tially removed, none but the strongest can stand on their feet ; 
the weaker and more susceptible totter and reel about, in the 
strangest style. But even this staggering and spasmodic life is 
far better than the inertia of the worldling and the epicure. 
As I walk the streets, I often meet men coming out of princely 
houses, and obscure grog-shops, whose souls are buried and 
and sealed up in the sepulchre of their bodies, with no indica- 
tion that a spirit once lived there, except the epitaph of a fret- 
ful and dissatisfied expression. They remind me of Driesbach's 
animals, leading a life of gluttony, sleep, and mechanical evolu- 
tion. The Fourierites, with significant irony, would call them 
both the ultimate products of civilisation. 

The menagerie attracts crowds daily. It is certainly exciting 
to see Driesbach dash across the area in his chariot drawn by 
lions ; or sleep on a bed of living leopards, with a crouching 
tiger for his pillow ; or ofliering his hand to the mouth of a 
panther, as he would to the caresses of a kitten. But I could 
not help questioning whether it were right for a man to risk so 
much, or for animals to suffer so much for the purposes of 
amusement and pecuniary profit. I pitied the poor beasts ; 
for they seemed very sad, and their passive obedience was 
evidently the result of terror. Seeing plainly, as I do, that 
coercion, with all its discords, is a complete reversal of the divine 
law of attraction, and the harmonies it evolves, this caravan, 
with its wonderful exhibition of subdued ferocity and imitated 
intelligence, appeared to me like a small apartment of the 
infernal regions. Again and again, I returned to be soothed 
by the gentle Llama. I almost fancied that a human soul had 
passed into it, and was gazing sadly, through the large brilliant 
eyes, on this forced subjection of the free creatures of God. 

The Llama has always interested me strongly, and this was 



294 LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 

a beautiful specimen of its kind. It is, I believe, the only ani- 
mal which man has never been able to subdue by blows. When 
beaten, it weeps and dies, but will not obey. Its extreme sus- 
ceptibility to music, shows that it embodies some of the gentler 
affections. Its countenance and motions vary incessantly with 
the changing tune, and when the strain is plaintive, it stands 
motionless and listening, till the beautiful eyes are suffused 
with tears. I wish it could have known the love it excited in 
my heart. I felt melancholy to leave it thus alone, away from 
all its kind, compelled to watch the perpetual drill service of 
animals huge and small. But through this feeling arose the 
clear voice of Hope, proclaiming that the tigers and snakes 
within* man would finally be subdued. When this process is 
completed, man, being at peace with himself, will be in har- 
mony with Nature, and the obedience of inferior creatures 
will become freedom and joy, through the divine law of at- 
traction. 

Among the invasions on the rights of animals is the Ec- 
caleobion, a machine for hatching eggs by artificial warmth. 
This idea of substituting machinery for mothers excites in me 
some resistance. I should suppose the intelligent hens would 
get up a protest against being thus thrust aside from the uses 
of creation. The Eccaleobion is an ultimate form of the me- 
chanical spirit of the age, wherein men construct artificial me- 
mories, and teach grammar by a machine, in which the active 
verb is a little hammer pounding on the objective case. 

An egg broken on the third day of this artificial hatching- 
was shown me, and I was extremely interested in watching the 
first pulsations of the chicken's heart. Though no bigger than 
a pin's head, it worked with the regularity and precision of a 
steam-engine. 

There have lately been several lectures on Anatomy, adapted 
to popular comprehension. I rejoice at this ; for it has long 
been a cherished wish with me that a knowledge of the struc- 
ture of our bodies, and the laws which govern it, should extend 
from the scientific few into the common education of the people. 
I know of nothing so well calculated to diminish vice and vul- 
garity, as universal and rational information. But the impure 
state of society has so perverted nature, and ])linded common 
sense, that intelligent women, though eagerly studying the struc- 
ture of the earth, the attraction of the planets, and the repro- 
duction of plants, seem ashamed to know anything of the struc- 



LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 295 

ture of the human body, and of those physiological facts most 
intimately connected with their own health, and that of tlieii" 
children. I often hear remarks, which tempt me to exclaim, 
as Sir Charles Grandison did, to a lady who held her fan before 
her face, in the presence of a marble statue : " Wottest thou 
not, my dear, how much indelicsLcy there is in thy delicacy." 

The Manikin, or artificial Anatomy, used in illustrating these 
popular lectures, is an extremely curious machine, invented by 
a French physician. It is made of papier mache, and represents 
the human body with admirable perfection, in the shape, colour- 
ing, and arrangement, even of the minutest fibres. By the re- 
moval of wires, it can be completely dissected, so as to show the 
locality and functions of the various organs, the interior of the 
heart, lungs, tfec. I was struck with the perpetual presence of 
the red artery and the blue vein, side by side, in the minutest 
subdivisions of the frame ; the arteries conveying healthy, vigor- 
ous blood from the heart, to pervade and nourish the whole 
system ; the veins returning the exhausted and impure blood to 
the lungs, there to be purified by atmospheric action, and again 
return into the arteries. Is it not so with the progressive an- 
nunciation of truth, by the circulation of which the social body 
has attained its present growth ] Does not every truth come 
to us from the central heart of things, to be carried, with ear- 
nest, self-forgetting zeal, into the very fingers and toes of so- 
ciety 1 And when it becomes a dogma and a creed, learned 
only by tradition, must it not go back to God's free atmosphere, 
to be purified for newer and higher manifestations? 

But as every drop of blood, while it nourishes the body, like- 
wise changes it, so that no particle of bone, muscle, or flesh, is 
ever to-day precisely as it was yesterday — so the circulation of 
truth through the world gradually changes the whole social 
fabric, and the new truth comes into a social frame, difierent 
from the preceding, even in the minutest muscles of its ex- 
tremities. 

Christianity has degenerated into sectarianism, and is now 
returning, through innumerable veins, to be purified for healthy 
arterial action from the central heart. Yet had it not run an 
earnest life, and been returned through dogmas to be revivified, 
could there have been a social body fit to receive the high 
truths w^hich will roll the world forward into its millennium 1 
Of what use, for instance, would it be to preach pure, spiritual 
doctrines concerning marriage, to a social organisation based on 



296 LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 

Maliometanism 1 Disorderly as society now appears, it is never- 
theless true that the smallest fibre of the toe in our social frame, 
is in more harmonious relation to the universe, than it would 
have been had we not descended from nations possessing a 
knowledge of Christianity. 

The same thing is true of fragmentary portions of Christi- 
anity. Anti-slavery, temperance, and peace, may degenerate 
into sects, and thus cease to promote growth ; but the fact, that 
they once circulated with a true life, has prepared every fibre 
of the social organisation for the appropriation of higher and 
more universal truths. Thus does the world grow from infancy 
to youth, and from youth to manhood. 

And a/tei^ manhood — what then comes to society 1 Must it 
reproduce itself through another infancy, and youth 1 Or, 
being spiritual in its essence, will it, like the soul of man, finally 
wear a spiritual body, to live and move freely, in harmony with 
the universe 1 

Here I pause ; and looking thoughtfully from my window, a 
peaceful cemetery lies before me, with its grassy mounds and 
evergreen shrubbery. Busy thought has projected its lines far 
into the infinite, and through that sleeping-place only, can it 
ever see the return of the curve. Ah, how much I shall then 
know ! Magazines would pay a hundred guineas a page for 
my information, if they could only be sure that the author was 
where she dated from. I will come in the deep stillness of the 
starry midnight, and whisper it to gentle, child-like souls ; and 
they will utter it, not knowing whence it came. But the peri- 
odicals will call it mysticism and trash, not worth half a dollar 
a page, and far less important than the price of cotton. Never- 
theless, the mystical word will pass from God's free atmosphere 
into the lungs of society, and renovate the spiritual blood, which, 
having completed its course, will return again to the centre. 
And day by day the whole body will be changed, so that no 
little veinlet or bone will remain as it was before the despised 
mystical word was uttered. The angels will watch all this in 
its hourly progress, while they take no note of presidential elec- 
tions, or the price of cotton. 



LETTERS FROM XEW YORK. 297 

LETTER XII. 

April 15, 1844. 

You remind me that I often allude to correspondences be- 
tween things natural and spiritual, and ask how I can call it a 
science, since it is altogether arbitrary and imaginary. It is 
doubtless true that theories of correspondence may be invented, 
which are unlike, and even contradictory ; but this does not 
alter the fact that there is a real harmonious relation between 
all things natural and all things spiritual, descending from gen- 
erals into the minutest particulars, and governed by laws as 
unchangeable as any of the outward sciences. This was first re- 
vealed to me, in early life, in the writings of Swedenborg. The 
subject took strong hold of my mind, and has ever since deeply 
and vividly coloured the whole fabric of my thought. 

Minds accustomed to observe the relation between the inward 
and the outward, are struck, first of all, with the duality that 
prevails everywhere ; the universal presence of a masculine and 
a feminine principle. For instance, understanding and will, or 
thought and affection ; light and heat ; time and space ; words 
and tones. That tones indicate the affections, or feelings, needs 
no proof ; for every body knows that the meaning of a word 
may be entirely changed by the tone in which it is uttered. In 
proportion as the sentiments are refined and cultivated, musi- 
cal inflexions run through the voice, and perchance are heard by 
the angels as a harp accompaniment to speech. 

In written language, the duality is again observable ; for 
vowels are feminine and consonants are masculine. Hence 
music flows more easily into languages abounding with vowels. 
These sounds glide and mingle, like all expressions of the affec- 
tions ; but consonants are hard and distinct, like things of truth. 

Love, or Good, is the inmost univei'sal essence of all things. 
Music, being disembodied tone, is the expression of love, or the 
affections, in a general sense. Hence, it glides, like a pervad- 
ing soul, into all things of literature and art ; giving painting 
its tone, architecture its harmony, and poetry its rhythm. It 
has been beautifully said, that " Music is the voice of God and 
poetry his language," 

Words being of truth, are divided into many dialects, and 
nations cannot understand each other's speech; and so it is 
with the opinions and doctrines of mankind. But the affec- 
tions are everywhere the same; and music, being their voice, 



298 LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 

is a universal medium between human hearts, exciting the 
same emotions in the Italian and the Swede. 

Everywhere, down to the minutest details, the duality recurs. 
In written music, there are signs for intonations, and signs for 
duration; intonation relating to space, or the affections, and 
duration to time, or truth. Soprano is feminine, and bass is 
masculine; but take woman's voice alone, and it divides into; 
soprano and contralto; a man's voice divides into tenor and 
bass. Soprano is the voice of woman's affections, and contralto 
of woman's intellect. Tenor is the voice of man's affections, 
and bass of his intellect. Soprano is an octave higher than 
tenor? and contralto an octave higher than bass; for the 
feminine principle, which represents the affections and moral 
sentiments, is always higher than the masculine or intellectual 
principle, which is characterised by breadth. Every class of 
instruments has representatives of the masculine and feminine 
principle; thus, the trumpet is the soprano of the horns, and 
the bassoon, or fagotto, is the bass of the oboes. The Air in 
music relates to the affections or sentiments, and the accom- 
paniments to truth. Hence the air is the soul, or pervading 
essence of every musical composition. If you analyse the mind, 
genius represents the transcending, infusing power, and skill 
the ultimate form or foundation. Skill may produce agreeable 
accords, but it requires genius to compose an expressive air. 
The human voice, in relation to instrumental music, represents 
the affections, and the instruments the intellect, or thought. 
Hence the air is intrusted to the voice. 

Among instruments, the violin represents the human voice, 
which, of all instruments, it most nearly resembles, in the 
infinite variety of its intonations. In purely instrumental 
music, therefore, the air is composed on the violin, and passes 
into the contralto and bass instruments, as the moral senti- 
ments pass into all things of intellect and science, modulating 
their w^iole expression. The bass sometimes leads the air 
temporarily, as a man of intellect preaches for doctrine what 
somebody else has loved and lived ; but in both these cases, the 
bass, or the scientific plane, originally received the air from 
something of higher tone than itself. 

Eastern nations do not understand harmony, and they be- 
lieve that women are without souls, made to be slaves of men. 
When women are their companions and friends, harmony will 
come into their music, and their grotesque and distorted forms 



LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 299 

of art will acquire symmetry and grace. In the Persian music 
it is said that a European ear can distinguish nothing like an 
air; and that fact alone would of itself sufficiently indicate the 
absence of an elevated pervading moral sentiment, gradually 
bringing science and social life into harmony with itself, as we 
see in Christian countries. 

All nations of Caucasian origin have an alphabet that repre- 
sents sounds ; bat those descended from the Malay race have 
never attained to alphabetic writing. The Chinese, who are 
the most civilised of them, use an alphabet of words, or signs 
of things, not of separate sounds. There is the same complica- 
tion in their musical signs. They express collections of sound 
by a single sign, instead of separating them into their simple 
elements. This indicates the absence of analysis, and of course 
no progress in art or science. 

One cannot easily define the relation between political and 
social changes, and the character of music: yet whoever observes 
them well, will see that they always bear most expressive relation 
to each other. In Gothic times arose the Fague, a musical 
composition which has been thus described: "It goes circling 
upward, like a many-tongued flame, always aspiring, never 
finished, telling of more that it would be. There are innum- 
erable voices and airs winding and blending into one another, 
and leading you into the depths and mysterious mazes of a vast 
animated whole." How strikingly is this in keeping with the 
architecture of those times, and how expressive are both of the 
dim, superstitious, mystical sentiment of the age. 

Before the Protestant reformation, music, as well as literature, 
was mostly shut up in the church, and masses and anthems, like 
monkish books, were elaborately learned and artificial. But 
before the beginning of the seventeenth century, popular airs, 
which people sang at their work, and by the wayside, the 
melodies of a nation's heart, began to be arranged and har- 
monised. Music glided out of church and monastery into the 
free air of social life, and became the opera. Literature did 
the same, and took form in drama and novel; which, like the 
opera, are idealisations of the joys, sorrows, and passions of 
private life. 

Who does not hear, in the Marseillaise Hymn, the voice of a 
whole nation on the eve of revolution? 

"When ci\nc renovation 
Dawais on a kingdom, and for needful haste 



300 LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 

Best eloquence avails not, inspiration 
Mounts with a tune, that travels like a blast 
Piping through cave and battlemented tower ; 
Then starts the sluggard — pleased to meet 
That voice of freedom, in its power 
Of promises, shrill, wild, and sweet." 

Formerly the air reigned absolute, and the accompaniments 
were trifling and altogether subordinate appendages; but in 
modern times, the orchestra has been constantly increasing in 
importance. Now, every instrument is an individual character, 
every one has its say, each one attracts attention in turn, and 
according as it is more or less prominent, the vs^hole expression 
of the piece is changed. It could not be otherwise with music 
in this age, which has been most significantly called All Souls' 
Day; when men no longer receive from reverence or authority, 
but each one judges of truth for himself, and speaks of it for 
himself. 

That which orchestral music is aiming at, and approaching 
nearer and nearer to, is to combine infinite variety into perfect 
unity; to have each class of instruments distinct, yet so to 
mingle and work together, by harmony or contrast, that one 
soul shall pervade the whole. Believers in human progress 
will need no interpretation of the prophecy contained in this. 
They will see that music, too, is j^raying for "the kingdom to 
come on earth, as it is in heaven." 

It would be easy to follow out these resemblances to a great 
length. To some minds they would seem mere idle and absurd 
fancies; to others, they would be full of beauty and truth. 
Those who do not perceive the intimate relation between the 
sentiments of a nation, or a sect, and the expression of its music, 
would perhaps be convinced if they were to listen to Catholic 
chants and choruses, and then to the tunes in a Universalist 
place of worship. 

Swedenborg says that the number seven contains the whole, 
in a universal sense; and musicians have agreed that beyond 
seven sounds, arranged in particular order, either ascending or 
descending, the rest are merely repi'oduced in the same order. 
The eighth, or octave, begins again, and repeats the same sounds, 
with merely the difference that there is between a high and low 
voice. If we could disentangle the infinite complexities of 
creation, I believe we should find that each subdivision of 
nature contains the whole, repeated by the others in higher or 



LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 301 

lower keys. Of course, all these ascending and descending 
circles would chord at intervals. 

Between music and painting, the connection is so obvious, 
that the terms of the two arts are full of it. Men talk of the 
tone and harmony of a picture, and of light and shade in the 
sounds of an instrument. The chromatic scale derives its name 
from the Greek word chroma, which signifies colour; and the 
sounds of a good orchestra might easily suggest harmony of 
colours, even to a mind not very imaginative. 

In printed music, observe the predominance of the waving 
line of sound ; it is the undulating line of grace and beauty in 
architecture and sculpture. If we could trace the analogy 
distinctly and clearly, as superior intelligences can, we should 
perhaps perceive that Moorish architecture was composed in E 
major, as plainly as any of Haydn's music; and that the 
architecture of the 15th century was, like its prevailing music, 
in the key of F and D minor. 

Not between the arts alone is there this repetition of the 
same sounds on higher and lower keys. It pervades all creation, 
from the highest to the lowest, and fills every detail of nature 
and science with living significance. Thus mathematical 
proportions express the intervals of music, and precisely the 
same figures mark the distances of the planets. 

"The heavens, whose aspect makes our minds as still 
As they themselves appear to be, 
Innumerable voices fill 
With everlasting harmony ; 
The towering headlands, crowned wdth mist. 
Their feet among the billows, know 
That ocean is a mighty harmonist. 
Thy pinions, universal air. 
Ever waving to and fro, 
Are delegates of harmony, and bear 
Strains that support the seasons in their round.'' 

And all this complexity of creation, this infinite variety 
flowing from unity, is in the soul of man; and if it were not 
there, it could not be in creation. If there were not hope and 
memory in the human soul, there would be no major and minoi- 
mode in music; for the major and minor modes are the hoi)e 
and memory of sound. 

Pardon me that I draw my illustrations so largely from 
music. I am prone to write of whatever my mind is full; and 
for three or four years past, everything has spoken to me of 



302 LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 

music, and music lias spoken to me of everything. The 
phenomena of light and optics likewise abound with significant 
illustrations of spiritual correspondence. That light represents 
the universal influx of truth, is so plain, that in all languages, 
and from time immemorial, it has been spoken in metaphor. 
"To see the truth," "to receive light on a subject," are common 
expressions. Light is dual; for it is always accompanied with 
warmth, which is of the affections ; and therefore it vivifies and 
produces growth, as well as makes growth visible. In its origin, 
too, we find the feminine producing principle ; for 

"A voice to fight gave being." 

Whoever can wisely trace spiritual analogies through optics 
and colours, will find themselves in a mansion of glories, where 
all manner of beautiful forms are outlined with rainbows. I 
will allude but to one analogy, as I pass along. Light is one 
and unchangeable, but the objects on which it shines absorb 
and reflect its rays so variously, that modifications of colour 
therefrom are infinite. It is precisely so with truth, in its 
action on human souls. Truth is one and unchangeable, but 
no two minds receive it alike ; hence the innumerable colourings 
and shadings of human opinion. They might all be as har- 
monious as the instruments of a good orchestra; but terrible 
discord arises from the supposition of each one that it engrosses 
truth to itself, and a consequent desire to drown or overtop 
other voices. 

When metayjhors in language are particularly impressive in 
their beauty, it is an indication that they are founded in the 
real relation between things natural j;nd s})iritual. When I 
read, in some of Margaret Fuller's writings, "Wine is earth's 
answer to the sun," I smiled with j)leasure, as I would at the 
sight of a beautiful flower, or gem. I saw that the analogy lay 
deeper than fancy. To speak in musical phrase, I heard a 
harmonious chord in this comparison. Wine, as drink, re- 
presents truth, as the sun does by its light ; but its liquid 
warmth is like the heat of the sun. Its colour and its oflow 
indicate the predominance of the sentiments, affections, or 
passions. Hence, wine kindles the imagination excites and 
elevates the feelings, and throws off all caution and disguise. 
Hence, too, its excess is inflaming and unhealthy. 

Water so obviously represents truth, that men have always 
talked of streams of knowledge, and fountains of wisdom; but 



LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 303 

it is plainly a type of truth in a less universal sense than light. 
As light imparts colour according to the quality of the thing 
that receives it, so water takes its form from whatever contains 
it. Like the spiritual idea they signify, they cannot be mono- 
polised by men, but must forever remain universal gifts. It is 
true that water is sometimes sold by the gallon, in cities, and 
theological sects and teachers sell doctrines to some minds. 
But these are local deviations from a universal law. Neither 
truth nor water are changed by the limited and tem^Dorary 
monopoly; though unless the vessels are kept very clean, the 
purchasers will buy disease with their draught. 

Water rises and expands under the action of heat, as truth 
does under the influence of the moral sentiments. Perhaps steam 
could not have been used to diminish the obstructions of space 
and time, as it now does, had not an increasing feeling of the 
brotherhood of man entered into the philosophy, literature, and 
politics of the age, elevating and enlarging theories, opinions, 
and laws, and diminishing the spiritual distances between 
men. 

As water cannot be forced above its level, so the opinions 
and laws of a people never rise above their idea of God; but 
whatever is the real internal idea of the Divine Being, to that 
level, literature, education, and law, will rise through all 
obstructions. 

Swedenborg defines the correspondence of oil, as "the holy 
principle of the Good of Love." Such a type we should of 
course expect to be smooth and gliding, inflammable, and 
always rising above water. Its tendency to abate the raging of 
the waves is well known; and whoever tries the spiritual 
principle it represents, will find that it has the same power to 
calm the tempestuous soul of an angry man. That all truths, 
above the merely natural and scientific, are seen more and 
more clearly in proportion to the pure state of the affections, 
will be readily admitted by all observers of the inw^ard growth 
of the soul. It is likewise a fact that oil poured upon water, 
makes it lucid to its remotest depths, so that all substances in 
it can be distinctly seen. A traveller in Turkey writes thus : 
"I was aware that oil would calm the surface of the sea; but I 
did not know, until recently, that it rendered objects more 
distinct beneath the surface. A trinket of some value had been 
dropped out of the upper windows of our palace into the 
Bosphorus: which at this place was ten or tw^elve feet deep. 



304 LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 

It was so small, that dragging for it would have been perfectly- 
fruitless ; it was accordingly given up for lost, when one of the 
servants proposed to drop a little oil on the surface. This was 
acceded to, though with faint hopes of success. To our 
astonishment, the trinket immediately appeared in sight, and 
was eventually recovered." 

Priceless, altogether infinite in value, are the spiritual jewels 
that might be restored to the world, by pouring oil upon the 
troubled waves. 

Garments represent truth; and the "philosophy of clothes" 
is therefore not without meaning. In Eastern nations, where 
despotic government, and theological belief in fatalism, stop the 
progress of human thought, opinions change not, and the fashion, 
of garments is unvarying. But in France, where churches and 
governments are demolished and rebuilt in three days, the 
modes of dress are always changing. In Ameiica, we borrow 
our fasliions from older nations, and mostly do the same with 
our thoughts. 

I have spoken of the constant recurrence of quality ; but it 
is equally true, though not equally obvious in all particulars, 
that where there are two, there occurs a third, the ultimate 
plane of both. Thus in man, love, wisdom, and life ; or will 
understanding, and action. There are three primal colours, 
red, blue, and yellow. In music the perfect chord is composed 
of three notes. Animals, vegetables, and minerals, are the 
primaries, mediates, and ultimates, of things on the earth. 
Fountain, river, and sea, bear the same relation to each other. 
The rivers are mediates to convey spiritual truth, from the 
divine fountain, into natural and scientific truth. The sea is, 
in this relation, what bass is in music; the ultimate form, or 
scientific basis. Among minerals, iron is the ultimate; and 
the amount used by a nation indicates very truly their 
cultivation in sciences and mechanical arts. 

I have told you that I long ago found in the writings of 
Swedenborg the golden key that unlocks these mysteries, and 
that ray mind has been more or less busy with it ever since. 
Very often, wlien I had no recollection what his definition was, 
I have, by reflecting on the uses and properties of some natural 
substance, conjectured what its spiritual signification must be ; 
and upon examination, I have usually found that my conjecture 
was the same as his statement. I never but once successfully 
reversed the process. Once, I began with a remote spiritual 



LETTERS FROM MEW YORK. 305 

correspondence, and descended from it into an ultimate scientific 
law in music, the existence of which I had not previously 
known. By following space and time through several windings 
of spiritual analogy, I came to the conclusion that the tone of 
a note must depend on its place in the staff; that mere points 
would answer as well as anything else for this purpose, and 
therefore the different shape of the notes must be to mark 
duration, or time. I examined the rules of notation in music, 
and found that it was so ; but I was peculiarly delighted with 
this small addition to knowledge, because I arrived at it from 
the upper road. 

I need not inform you that glimpses of the relation between 
natural and spiritual things have been seen by reflecting and 
poetic souls, in all ages. It runs a bright thread of metaphor 
through the web of all languages, and sparkles like sun-points 
in the poetry of all times. The Pythagoreans said that "the 
One, from which all things flow, and to which all things 
ultimately tend, is Good." Plato says, "What liglit and sight 
are in the visible world, truth and knowledge are in the world 
of intelligences." Again he says, "God is truth, and light is 
his shadow." 

You will see that I have made no attempt to give a 
comprehensive view of correspondence. In stating my convic- 
tion that it is a genuine, though almost unknown science, I 
have written without effort, as I would have talked. From 
the fragments which thus glanced upon my mind, you may 
judge what shining gems, and rich veins of ore, might be found 
by souls that have capacity to see the whole in every part. 
That there must be immense complication in the science, you 
will perceive if you reflect that the good and the true mirror 
themselves in all the varieties of creation, and all Jiave a 
reversed imasje in the evil and the false. 



LETTEK XIJI. 

April 24th, 1844. 

You ask me what is transcendentalism, and what do trans- 
cendentalists believe 1 It is a question difficult, nay, impos- 
sible, to answer; for the minds so classified are incongruous 

u 



306 LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 

individuals without any creed. The name is in fact applied to 
everything new, strange, and unaccountable. If a man is a 
non-conformist to established creeds and opinions, and expresses 
his dissent in a manner ever so slightly peculiar, he is called a 
transcendentalist. It is indeed amusing to see how easily one 
may acquire this title. A southern lady, lately said to a friend 
of mine, " I knew you were a transcendentalist the first half 
hour I heard you talk." "How so?" inquired my friend. "Oh, 
it is easy enough to be seen by your peculiar phrases. " " In- 
deed ! I had thought my language was very plain and natural. 
Pray what transcendental phrase have I used*?" "The lirst 
time I ever saw you, you spake of a person at the North as un- 
usually gifted ; and I have often since heard you use other trans- 
cendental expressions." 

If you wish to know the origin of the word transcendental- 
ism, I will explain it, briefly and simply, as I understand it. 

All who know anything of the different schools of meta- 
physics, are aware that the philosophy of John Locke was based 
on the proposition that all knowledge is received into the soui 
through the medium of the senses ; and thence passes to be 
judged of and analysed by the understanding. 

The German school of metaphysics, with the celebrated Kant 
at its head, rejects this proposition as false ; it denies that ali 
knowledge is received through the senses, and maintains that 
the highest, and therefore most universal truths, are revealed 
within the soul, to a faculty transcending the understanding. 
This faculty they call pure Reason ; it being peculiar to them 
to use that word in contradistinction to the Understanding. 
To this pure Keason, which some of the writers call " The God 
within," they believe that all perceptions of the Good, the 
True, and the Beautiful, are revealed, in its unconscious quie- 
tude ; and that the province of the Understanding, with its five 
handmaids, the Senses, is confined merely to external things, 
such as facts, scientific laws, &c. 

This idea of an inwardly revealing faculty, transcending mere 
intellectual perception, will naturally remind many of the "in 
ward voice," believed in by the Society of Friends. In fact, 
the two phrases are different aspects of the same idea. The 
Quakers saw it through a religious medium, Kant in a light 
purely philosophic. — Closely connected with this idea is thr- 
doctrine of the inspiration of the Scriptures ; a doctrine concern- 
ing which the most confused and unsettled notions prevail, even 



LETTERS FRO.M XEW YOIIK. 307 

among those who would be most shocked at being charged with 
any doubts upon the subject. It is this idea which leads some 
to inquire, " Did Paul mean the same thing as the Transcen- 
dentalists, or the Quakers, when he made a distinction between 
what he wrote of himself, and what was given him to write V 

Unitarianism does not involve transcendentalism : on the con- 
trary, it often cherishes an extreme aversion to it. But, gener- 
ally speaking, minds inclined to transcendentalism are of Uni- 
tarian habits of thought. The cause is obvious enough. Both 
judge the recorded facts of Revelation by the light of Reason; 
and in no case acknowledge the authority of Revelation over 
Reason ; believing, only when Reason and Revelation seem to 
them coincident. 

The more popular and common forms of theology have a natural 
affinity with the metaphysics of Locke. That is, certain things 
witnessed by the senses, and recorded as miraculous facts, are 
considered sufS.cient reasons for believing everything uttered by 
those who performed the miracles. Those who presume to 
judge of Revelation by Reason may, and generally do, believe 
the miracles of Christ, as recorded facts ; but they could not 
believe in the doctrines of Christ because he worked miracles. 

There is slight resemblance between Quakers and Transcen- 
dentalists. The former abjure imagination and the Arts, and 
love to enclose everything within prescribed rules and regula- 
tions. The latter luxuriate in the beautiful, and their theories 
are so expansive and indefinite, that they remind one of the old 
story of transmigration, in which a philosopher, being aske<l 
what form he would like to have his disembodied soul enter, an- 
swered, " Form in general ; no form in particular." 

But the doctrine of perpetual revelation, heard in the quie- 
tude of the soul, produces one similar result in both. Neithei- 
of them fiivour the activity of reforms. The Quaker wishes 
•' Israel to remain in his tents ;" his cure for evils is to "keep 
in the qniet." The transcendentalist phrases it otherwise ; 
he advises " to lie still in the spiritual sunshine, and grow." 
Neither are fond of the maxim, that " action strikes fiery light 
from the rocks it has to hew through." 

The style of writing characteristic of transcendentalists has 
excited much merriment, and more wonder. That which is 
really uttered has deeper significance than is nsually appre- 
hended by intelligent minds unaccustomed to similar habits of 
thought ; but it has an oracular and mystical sound, because 



308 LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 

they rather announce, than argue, what seems to them truth. 
This comes of their doctrine of intuitive perception. It is the 
business of the understanding, they say, to analyse, compare, 
and prove ; but reason reveals. Therefore, there is about their 
writings ''a tone and colour sui generis ; something of the clear 
and the mysterious, like the sea in a beautiful day in summer. 
A light, cold and colourless, pierces the liquid mass, giving it a 
certain transparency that captivates the eye, but which imports 
that there is always, at the bottom, a mystery unexplained." 

Imitations of transcendentalism are unquestionably the most 
contemptible form of affectation and sham. Parrots laying 
claim to Edward Irving's inspired gift of tongues, would be 
wisdom compared with it. This class of superticial and arti- 
ficial writers are best described by Daniel O'Connell's witty 
remark concerning certain public speakers : " They are men 
who aim at nothing, and hit it," 

It is true that some of the profoundest of the transcendent- 
alists are a little too fond of the impersonal abstraction it. This 
it often seems to be something " without form and void, and 
darkness on the face of it." Not loncj a<]jo, one of this fra- 
ternity said to me, " Why do we rummage about with memory 
in the past, to find out our whereabout and our whatabout? 
It is because we are not true to ourselves, is it not '? If we 
were true to ourselves, we should have no need to rummage 
about with memory in the past, to find out our whereabout, and 
our whatabout ; for it would be with us, we should be it.'' 

However this obscurity with regard to the " whereabout and 
whatabout," is not an exclusive peculiarity of the modern 
school. Old Dr. Bentley, formerly of Salem, Mass., once took 
for his text, " It is his spirit;" and began his sermon thus: 
" The sympathy of our loves is the ideal presence ; and this 
with full consent in its best effects." 

New- York is in too much of a hurry-scurry all the time, to 
'' lie still in the sunshine " and ripen such fruit as either tran- 
scendental philosophy, or its poverty-stricken imitations. It 
never enters into the head of a Wall-street merchant that he is, 
as a friend of ours asserts, " personally resjDonsible for the 
obliquity of the earth's axis." 

"Transcendental muslins" I have often seen advertised in 
the Bowery ; but I have rarely met with transcendentalism in 
any other form in this city. I did once out of pure mischief 
send a politician and an active man of business to a house^ 



LETTERS FROM XEAV YORK. 309 

where I knew they woukl encounter three or four of these dis- 
ciples, who occasionally ride a pretty high horse. When they 
came back, I asked with a sober face, what they had talked 
about. They said they did not know ; but being unmercifully 
urged to tell something that was said, the politician at last an- 
swered : " One of them divided man into three states ; the dis- 
conscious, the conscious, and the unconscious. The disconscious 
is the state of a pig ; the conscious is the baptism by water ; 
and the unconscious is the baptism by fire." '' How did the 
conversation impress your mind V said I, restraining a smile. 
" Why, after I had heard them talk a few minutes," replied he, 
•' I'll be hanged if I knew whether I had any mind." 

I then asked the man of business how he had been edified. 
" My head aches, " said he ; they have put my mind and body 
both in a confounded muss." 

You must know that " muss" is a favourite phrase with New- 
Yorkers to express everything that is in a state of confusion. 
Not only mountains, but mole-hills, here bring forth a " 7'icli- 
culus muss.^^ 

Being in a tormenting mood, I insisted that my friend should 
give some account of the conversation. 

Thus urged, he at last replied, "Why, one of them seemed 
to think there was some connection between mind and body ; 
but as for the rest, as far as I could understand them, they all 
seemed to think the body was nothing but a sham." 

I am sometimes called a transcendentalist myself, perhaps 
because I use the phrase " highly gifted." But I acknowledged 
considerable sympathy with the perplexed politician and man 
of business. For there are people, very intellectual ones too, 
who mystify me in the strangest fashion. After talking with 
them, my spirit always has to bite its finger, to know whether 
it exists or not ; and even then, the question arises whether a 
sensation is a sensation. As for the received axiom that " a 
thing cannot be and not be, at the same time," they always set 
it twirling. 

If asked to explain themselves, they answer with Jean Paul, 
" Probably God knows what I meant, but I have forgotten." 



310 LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 

LETTER XIY. 



May 15, 1844. 



Wandering over tlie fields between Hoboken and Weehawken, 
I came upon the loveliest little clump of violets, nestling in the 
hollow of an old moss-grown stump. The joy they gave me, 
you could not imagine unless you had long been shut up in a 
city. Their fragrance and beauty, the genial air, the open sun- 
light, the little zephyrs playing at shuttlecock with the dried 
leaves about my feet, all greeted me like the smile of a friend. 
And the little cluster of violets had many pleasant things to 
say to me, too. They spoke of an unknown friend, who sends 
from Cambridge, Massachusetts, the very earliest flowers of 
spring, and the very latest of autumn, directed " To the Author 
of Letters from N. York." It is the most tasteful compliment 
I ever received ; except once, when I was visiting in a town 
where I was a stranger, some children brought a basket of 
flowers, " for the lady who writes stories for us." I hope I am 
a better woman, for the offering of these little ones, and for the 
flowers that come and speak to me so kindly of my own distant 
and beloved New-England. If you can find the giver of the 
graceful offering, tell him the bouquet of Gentians came to me 
as fresh as young affections ; and for a fortnight they continued 
to open their beautiful blue eyes to the sunshine, and close their 
long graceful fringes in evening sleep. 

The first flowers and the last indicate just the mission I 
should like to perform. 1 would offer Flowers for Children at 
the outset of life, and w^reathe a bright crown of Immortelles 
for the Cross at its close. To the young I would speak joyfully, 
to the old cheerfully, to all hopefully. Would that I could 
drop lilies and roses along the path of every human brother 
and sister. 

Those violets by the mossy stuaip reminded me of one who 
was, as I should like to be, as truly a child when she returned 
to the bosom of her Father, as when he first sent her forth to 
make the pilgrimage of time. I allude to Hannah Adams, the 
simple-hearted old lady, so well remembered as the earliest 
writer among the women of New-England. The last time I 
called upon her, I carried her a bunch of fresh violets ; and I 
well remember the eager pleasure with which she received them. 
I was a young girl, and she was aged; but her joy was as vivid 



LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 311 

as mine, and her face mantled with smiles, as she greeted the 
beloved flowers. " Oh, this reminds me of my visit to the 
country, last spring," said she. " Everything looked so 
very beautiful ! It seemed to me as if the world was just 
created." 

I never saw an old person, the expression of whose face was 
so innocent and infantine as hers. Any cosmetic that could 
produce this effect would sell high in the market. But the 
spirit never yields its beautiful gifts to any such process of 
jugglery. They who would retain a fresh old age, must love 
nature with a genuine love, and be simple, cheerful, and kindly, 
even as little children. 

Hannah Adams struggled with poverty in her youth, and 
being feeble in health, and of a sensitive temperament, she hid 
herself in life's shadies't coverts, and held communion only with 
nature and with books. This gave a timid constraint to her 
manner, which she could not overcome in later life, when she 
was accustomed to attention from the wealthy and distin- 
guished ; but in this there was a certain something not alto- 
gether ungraceful, like the awkwardness of a child. 

Her uncommon learning, her diffidence, and occasional ab- 
straction of mind, gave rise to innumerable anecdotes. These 
stories sometimes returned to her, and increased the constraint 
of her manner, by inducing a troublesome consciousness of being 
unlike other people. Once, when she was going on a short 
excursion, in her old age, she was repeatedly charged to count 
the articles of her baggage, and by no means to forget that she 
carried three. A gentleman in the stage, when he saw the 
learned Hannah Adams enter, expected a rich treat in her 
conversation ; but to his great disappointment, the only words 
she uttered during the whole ride, were " Basket, bundle, and 
box, basket, bundle, and box," frequently repeated. She 
attended Dr. Channing's church, and had great personal re- 
spect for him. Sometimes, when his sermons peculiarly inter- 
ested her, she would become so absorbed in listening, that she 
unconsciously rose by degrees, and leaning forward over the 
pew, w^ouid gaze at the preacher with an expression of delight 
so intense, that it excited a smile in those who observed her. 
One day, she was seen knocking at the meeting-house door, 
and being asked why she did it, she replied that she wanted to 
see Dr. Channing. When informed that the church was closed 
on week-days, and that she would be more likely to find him at 



312 LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 

his house, she very quietly followed the direction, saying she 
wondered she had not thought of that before. 

A friend was one day visiting at a house where some stranger 
guests expressed great curiosity to see Hannah Adams ; and to 
gratify them she offered to go and invite her to tea. The old 
lady accepted the invitation with the simple gladness of a child, 
and was soon ready to accomjoany her kind guide. The wind 
was in rather an active mood, and nearly blew off her bonnet. 
When they entered the house, they passed into a room, on one 
side of which were mirror-windows. The lady, perceiving that 
Miss Adams's cap was awray, led her up to the mirror to adjust 
it. But she was so little accustomed to view her own face, 
that she supposed a stranger stood before her, and bobbing a 
little child-like courtesy, she said, in all simplicity, " How do 
you do, ma'am*?" " I want you to look' and see if your cap is 
right," said her friend, smiling. But Miss Adams, supposing 
herself introduced again, dropped another courtesy, and rej)eated, 
" How do you do, ma'am?" It was some minutes before she 
was enabled clearly to comprehend that she stood before a mir- 
ror, and was courtesying to her own image. 

Such indications of an absent mind, though they were not of 
frequent occurrence, were of course busily repeated and often 
exaggerated. For in those days, intellectual accomplishments 
were so rare, that a woman who had fitted several boys for col- 
lege, was considered as great a prodigy as the learned pig that 
could spell his own name. Even in our own day; a car23enter 
being informed that the model of the house he was building 
was planned by a woman, exclaimed in astonishment, " Why, 
I declare, she knows e'en-a'most as much as some men !" Those 
who knew him and the highly cultivated and intellectual 
woman, who planned the building, found his condescending 
acknowledgement of an " e'en-a'most " equality sufficiently 
comic. 

The prejudice against literary women was then much stronger 
than now. Some one happened to remark that they wondered 
Hannah Adams had never been married, for she was really a 
very sensible and pleasant woman. " Marry Hannah Adams !^' 
exclaimed a gentleman, who was present; " why I should as 
soon think of marrying my Greek grammar." Yet the good 
lady was not at all like a Greek grammar. She was full of 
kindly thoughts and gentle affections, innocent as a child, and 
truthiful as the sun. That she felt constrained, and not at home 



LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 313 

in the world, was more the fault of society in being too artificial, 
than hers in being too natural and simple. 

It is true, that circumstances in early life had too much fos- 
tered her love of seclusion, and of intellectual culture. Habits 
of practical skill, and convenient self-help, must be formed in 
early life, or they will never be thoroughly acquired. Stewart 
says truly that " the cultivation of any one part of our charac- 
ter, such as exclusive attention to the culture of taste, the 
argumentative powers, or even to the refinement of moral feel- 
ing, is always more or less hazardous." Bacon has the following 
fine passage on the same idea : " In forming the human charac- 
ter, we must not proceed as a sculptor does in forming a statue, 
who works sometimes on the face, sometimes on the limbs, and 
sometimes on the folds of the garments. But we must proceed, 
and it is in our power to proceed, as nature does in forming a 
flower, or any other of her productions. She throws out alto- 
gether, and at once, the whole system of being, and the rudi- 
ments of all the parts.'' 

The want of self-reliance, and what in New-England is called 
*' faculty" about common things, was partly to be attributed to 
Miss Adams's delicate health, and timid temperament, and 
partly to the ever-watchful care of an affectionate elder sister, 
who ministered to her wants, and supplied her deficiencies. 
Thus early accustomed to lean upon a stronger nature, she was 
like a vine deprived of its support, when this beloved relative 
passed into the world of spirits, and left her alone at the age of 
thirty-five. 

In the last interview I had with her, she spoke much of this 
sister. " Never,'' said she, " was there a stronger friendship 
than existed between us. Elizabeth was my guide, my friend, 
my earthly all. We shared the same apartment for years. I 
had no thought concealed from her. The bond of affection was 
so strong, that to part with life seemed as nothing compared 
to parting with her." 

"I have been told," said I, "that you think you once saw 
the spirit of this dear sister." 

"I cannot say that I believe it," she replied. "I have no 
superstition about me, and I am very unwilling to believe 
marvellous things. But I have never felt cjuite clear about 
tlie circumstances of the case to which you allude. Dui-ing my 
sister's illness, we talked much together of our approaching 
separation, and of the probable state of the soul hereafter. 



314 LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 

We inquired anxiously whether we should know each other in 
that spirit v/orld? Would she be able to see what I was doing 
and thinking on earth? During these conversations, my sistei- 
said, with solemn earnestness, 'Dear Hannah, if spirits ai'e 
permitted to visit those they have loved on earth, I will give 
you some visible token that I am near you. Would you be 
afraid of me ? ' I told her I could not be afraid of her, and that 
it would be most pleasant to me to have her come. I thought 
so then; but after my sister died, the recollection of what she 
had said produced an undefined feeling of fear, when I was in 
solitude and darkness. However, weeks and months passed, 
and my vague superstition grew weaker and weaker. At last, 
it occurred to my mind only in the form of wonder that I could 
ever have allowed myself to be thus excited. 

"One night, T sat ujd, as I often did, reading until midnight. 
After I had extinguished my light and retired to rest, I 
remained wakeful for some time. My mind was serene and 
cheerful; and I do not recollect that my thoughts were in any 
way occupied with my sister. Presently, my attention was 
arrested by a dimly luminous cloud, not far from the bed. I 
looked out, to see whether a light from another chamber of the 
house was reflected on my Avindow; but all was darkness. I 
again turned to my pillow, and saw that the luminous appear- 
ance was brighter, and visibly increased in size. The shutters 
of our old fashioned house had holes in the middle, in the shape 
of a heart. I thought it must be that the moonlight streamed 
through one of tliese, and perhaps shone on some white garment, 
hanging on the wall. I rose and felt of the wall, but there was 
nothing there. I looked out of the window, and saw only a 
cloudy midnight sky, with here and there a solitary star. 
When I returned to bed, and still saw the unaccountable column 
of light, then, for the first time, a feeling of awe came over me. 
f had hitherto thought only of natural causes; but now a 
vague idea of the supernatural began to oppress me. My sister's 
promise occurred to my mind, and made me afraid. A trem- 
bling came over me, as I watched the light, and saw it become 
more and more distinct. It was not like moonlight, or sunlight. 
I cannot describe it better than by comparing it to a brilliant 
lamp, shining through thin, clear, white muslin. It gradually 
assumed shape, and there slowly emerged from it the outlines 
of my sister's face and figure. The very strings of her cap, tied 
in a bow under her chin, were distinctly visible. A terrible 



LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 315 

fear weighed upon my heart, like the night-mare; and I 
screamed aloud. This brought some of the family to me, 
in great alarm; but before they entered, the light had vanished. 
When I told the story, they said 1 had been asleep and dream- 
ing. I felt perfectl}?- sure that I had been wide awake; but 
they said I was mistaken. Friends, to whom I mentioned 
it afterward, said that if I were indeed awake, it must have 
been a nervous delusion; and though I never had a nerve in 
my life, I supposed it must be so." 

I remarked that physicians called all such phenomena 
nervous delusions; and that many seemed to accept the phrase 
as a satisfactory explanation; but that to my mind it did not 
in the least diminish the mystery. How was it that disordered 
nerves produced visions'? With what eyes did nervous jjersons 
see objects, that were invisible to the natural senses? Grant 
that it was an image from the mind, how did the nerves paint 
it on the air? 

"I cannot tell," replied Miss Adams. "I do not think there 
is any use in puzzling ourselves with these questions. I was 
somewhat ashamed of my terror, and was willing enough to 
to have the blame laid on my nerves. Still, I should have 
been glad to have found some white garment hanging on the 
wall, next morning, that my incredulity might have been satis- 
fied with proof that the whole was an illusion of my natural 
senses, aided by imagination. They wished me to have some 
one sleep in my apartment : but I was indignant at being- 
supposed the victim of childish fears. My courage returned. 
I said, 'If my good sister did come to me, her errand was 
surely a kind one, and why should T have been afraid?' After 
they left me for the night, I almost wished that the vision, if it 
were indeed my sister, w^ould come again. I fell asleep, and 
dreamed of sweet intercourse with her; but the luminous 
shadow never came again. I cannot say whether it were 
dream or vision; the subject has always puzzled me." 

I asked the old lady if she had never been sorry that fear 
prevented her from speaking to the appearance of her sister. 

"Yes, I have been very sorry," she replied. "But had she 
appeared twenty times, perhaps I should never have mustered 
courage to speak first, which I understand is the established 
etiquette on such occasions." 

I tell the story as she told it to me, without ofiering explana- 
tion. A singular mixture of belief and scepticism ran through 



316 LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 

lier whole account; as if the fear of being deemed superstitious 
were continually with her, and mocked at the distinctness of 
her own impressions. Those familiar with the phenomena of 
animal magnetism will not dismiss the multitude of stories of 
this kind as mere inventions of disordered brains. If they are 
wise, they will conclude that the relations between spirit and 
matter are governed by laws now mysterious, but which may 
hereafter be clear to the eye of reason. A few centuries ago, 
our most common experiments in science would have been 
deemed magical. And the present age, with all its self-con- 
scious progress, is not half so wise as it deems itself. 

Hannah Adams died at the age of seventy-six. She was the 
first person buried at Mount Auburn; where a very neat 
monument was erected to her memory, bearing the following 
inscription, as nearly as I recollect it: "Hannah Adams, the 
Historian of the Jews, the Biographer of the Christian Sects, 
and the First Tenant of Mount Auburn." 

A Boston lawyer, noted for technical accuracy, remarked, 
as he read this epitaph, "She cannot properly be called a 
tenant.^^ 



LETTER XY. 

May 22, 1844. 

Weehawken is a fine place for early flowers. Brushing away 
last year's leaves, in search of these hidden treasures, I started 
a little mole, and was quick enough to catch him. I held him 
but a moment, to admire the rich glossy brown of his velvetj 
fur; for the palpitating heart of the poor blind creature 
reproved my unkindness in keeping him prisoner. As soon as 
I let him go, he ploughed down into the earth with wonderful 
rapidity, and for some distance I could see a trembling furrow 
on the surface, as he hurried to his subterranean home. This 
incident led to many thoughts concerning the happy life 
of animals alone with nature, and their wretched existence in 
cities. A painful vision of lean and lacerated omnibus-horses 
passed before me; and this is a subject so oppressive to my 
feelings, that I never enter an omnibus, unless driven in by 
stress of weather. With these, came recollections of dogs 
fighting in the streets, set on by thoughtless boys and hardened 
men. 



LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 317 

In beautiful contrast with such scenes, I thought of the ex- 
ample of the Quakers. Blessed is the lot of animals that come 
under the care of that friendly sect. A Quaker meeting-house 
may be known at a glance, by the ample and comfortable pro- 
vision made for horses. Their domestic animals usually fall 
into their own sleek, quiet, and regular ways. No bell indicates 
the hour for Quaker worship ; but I have known their horses 
walk off, of their own accord, when the family were detained 
at home by any unusual occurrence. They w^ould go at exactly 
the right hour, stand at the meeting-house door a few minutes, 
and then leisurely walk into the adjoining shed. When the 
people came out, they w^ould go up to the door, and stand 
awhile, with faces turned homeward ; then, would they quietly 
trot back to their barn, apparently well satisfied with the silent 
meetin":. 

The assimilation of dumb creatures to their masters is by no 
means uncommon. I have seen a horse, all life and spirit, 
carrying his head erect, and stepping freely, while he belonged 
to a dashing blade : but when he passed into the hands of a 
country clergyman, he soon became one of the most demure, 
jog-trotting creatures imaginable. There is a continual trans- 
mission from the sjoirit of man to all things beneath him. 
Glimpses of its effects are so far visible in this world, that an 
observing eye may perceive the prevailing character of a person 
in his house and equipage, the arrangements of his room, and 
still more in the appearance and deportment of children and 
animals. In another world, correspondence between the out- 
ward and inward will doubtless be so perfect, that a man's 
character may be read at once, in the things around him. 
There, the pure only can wear pearls. 

With regard to the treatment of animals, there is a most 
lamentable deficiency in education. It is not easy to estimate 
the effects, on church and state, of so simjile a thing as allowing 
boys to encourage dog-fights. Here, again, the example of the 
Quakers is excellent. On all occasions, they inculcate the 
greatest possible tenderness toward the brute creation. No one 
can read the life of that gentle-hearted apostle, John Wood- 
man, without being touched and softened by his contrition at 
having in childhood killed a robin that was tending her little 
ones. 

I once asked John W. Edmonds, one of the inspectors at 
Sing Sing prison, how it was that a Wall-street lawyer, brought 



318 LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 

into sharp collisions with the world, had preserved so much 
tenderness of heart. " My mother was a Quaker," said he, 
'• and a serious conversation she had with me, when I was four 
or five years old, has afiected my whole life. I had joined some 
boys, who were tormenting a kitten. AYe chased her, and 
threw stones, till Ave killed her. When I came into the house, 
I told my mother what we had done. She took me on her lap, 
and talked to me in such moving style about my cruelty to the 
poor hel23less little animal, that I sobbed as if my heart would 
break. Afterward, if I were tempted to do anything unkind, 
she would tell me to remember how sorry I was for having hurt 
the poor little kitten. I never foigot that circumstance. For 
a long time after, I could not think of it without tears. It 
impressed me so deeply, that when I became a man, I could 
never see a forlorn suffering wretch run down by his fellow- 
beings, without thinking of that hunted and pelted little beast. 
Even now, the ghost of that kitten, and the recollection of my 
dear mother's gentle lessons, come between me and the prison- 
ers at Sing Sing, and forever admonish me to be humane and 
forbearing." 

One of the most amusing stories I ever heard of animals, was 
lately told by a sober Quaker from New-Jersey, who said it was 
related to him by the eye-witness, himself a member of the 
same serious sect. He was one day in the fields, near a stream 
where several geese were swimming. Presently, he observed 
one disappear under the water, with a sudden jerk.. While he 
looked for her to rise again, he saw a fox emerge from the watei-, 
and trot off to the woods with the unfortunate goose in his 
mouth. He chanced to go in a directioii where it was easy for 
the man to watch his movements. He carried his burden to a 
recess under an overhanging rock. Hei-e he scratched away a 
mass of dry leaves, scooped a hole, hid his treasure within, and 
covered it up very carefully. Then off he went to the stream 
again, entered some distance behind the flock of geese, and 
floated noiselessly along, with merely the tip of his nose visible 
above the surface. But this time he was not so fortunate in 
his manoeuvres. The geese, by some accident, took the alarm, 
and flew away with loud cackling. The fox, finding himself 
defeated, walked off in a direction opposite to the jjlaco where 
his victim was buried. The man uncovered the hole, put the 
goose in his basket, replaced the leaves carefully, and stood 
patiently at a distance, to watch further proceedings. The sly 



LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 319 

thief was soon seen returning with another fox, that lie had 
invited to dine with him. They trotted along riglit merrily, 
swinging their tails, snuffing the air, and smacking their lips, 
in anticipation of a rich repast. When they arrived under the 
rock. Keynard eagerly scratched away the leaves ; but lo, his 
dinner had disappeared ! He looked at his companion, and 
plainly saw by his countenance, that he more than misdoubted 
whether any goose was ever there, as pretended. He evidently 
considered his friend's hospitality a sham, and himself insulted. 
His contemptuous expression was more than the mortified fox 
could bear. Thougli conscious of generous intentions, he felt 
that all assurances to that effect would be regarded as lies. 
Appearances were certainly very much against him; for his 
tail slunk between his legs, and he held his head down, looking 
sideways, with a sneaking glance at his disappointed companion. 
Indignant at what he supposed to be an attempt to get up a 
character for generosity, on false pretences, the offended guest 
seized his unfortunate host, and cuffed him most luimercifully. 
Poor Keynard bore the infliction with the utmost patience, and 
sneaked off as if conscious that he had received no more than 
might naturally be expected, under the circumstances. 

This story is almost as droll as the imaginary anecdote 
invented by the Ettrick Shepherd. He says that his dog 
Hector, by constant fellowship with him, had come to resemble 
him so much, that he sent him to church as his representative. 
Next day, the minister commended him, in the presence of the 
dog, for his grave and Christian-like deportment during sermon 
time. "Whereupon," says the Shepherd, "Hector and I gave 
one another such a look ! " He represents the dog as obliged to 
escape from the room, and scamper over a w^all, where he could 
laugh without being disrespectful to the minister. 

If human souls were in a pure and healthy state, I have no 
doubt the understanding between men and animals would 
improve to a degree that would now seem miraculous. Denham 
describes birds in the lonely interior of Africa, as flocking 
about him, and looking him in the face. The picture of this scene 
always seemed to me a true representation of man's natural 
relation to the animals. The disciples of Pythagoras have handed 
down to us anecdotes of him, which imply a prophetic conscious- 
ness of the power man might obtain over the brute creation, if his 
own soul were developed according to the laws of divine order. 
They tell us that one day, having occasion for a pen, he called 



320 LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 

a white eagle from the clouds, who stooped to have a feather 
plucked from her wing, and then soared again. A wild boar 
that infested the neighbourhood, committed great ravages, and 
defied all the eiforts of the hunters. Pythagoras went to the 
haunts frequented by the evil beast, reasoned with him upon 
the impropriety of such behaviour, and made him so thoroughly 
ashamed of himself, that he was guilty of no further depreda- 
tions. These stories are beautiful, as types of the harmonious 
subordination of our animal passions to the pure dominion of 
reason; but they likewise indicate what changes might take 
place if man were at one with God and nature. 

Birds and beasts have in fact our own nature, flattened a 
semi-tone. Indications of this ap})ear not only in their instinct, 
so nearly approaching to reason, but also in the striking 
resemblance between animals and human beings. Audubon 
has A^ery remarkably the eye of a bird. Everybody has 
observed children that look like kittens and lambs ; and whole 
classes of faces, that resemble horses, foxes, and baboons. In 
the great tune of creation, the same notes are ever recurring in 
difierent keys. 

Mineral, vegetable, and animal, are the three notes that form 
the perfect, chord of nature. First the ultimate plane was 
formed of earth and stones, then the mediate of vegetables, then 
the dominant of tlie animal kingdom. But man includes 
within himself all that is in the lower series; and living in a 
higher world while he lives in this, he constantly receives a 
spiritual influx, wdiich he unconsciously transmits through the 
consecutive links of the chain. Hence the whole of creation is 
affected by the soul of man; but animals more especially, 
because they are nearest to him, and more closely allied to that 
jjortion of his nature which changes with spiritual growth. In 
them, he may see himself, as in a mirror. It is therefore not 
merely a poetic dream that the lion and the lamb would 
actually lie down together, if man were holy. Order in the 
social state would soon be reflected in a perfectly beautiful and 
harmonious relation between ourselves and animals. 



LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 321 

LETTER XVI. 

June 10, 1844. 

On the Battery, the other day, I met an acquaintance from 
New-England. He was on his way from Virginia, where he 
had been making contracts for wood at a dolhir an acre. In 
the true spirit of Yankee enterprise, he buys up the produce of 
waste hinds, fells the trees, ships them to New York and 
Boston, and finds the trade profitable. 

A large emigration of substantial farmers from Orange, 
Duchess, and Columbia counties, in this State, have, within a 
few years, emigrated to the counties of Loudon, Culpepper and 
Fairfax, in Virginia. They bought up the w^orn-out jolanta- 
tions for a mere song, and, by judicious application of free 
labour, they are "redeeming the waste places, and making the 
wilderness blossom as the rose." A traveller recently told me 
that the farms cultivated by Quakers, who employ no slaves, 
formed such a striking contrast to other portions of Virginia, 
that they seemed almost like oases in the desert. 

What a lesson this teaches concerning the comparative efiect 
of slave-labour and free-labour, on the prosperity of a State ! 
It seems strange, indeed, that enlightened self-interest does not 
banish the accursed system from the world; for political 
economists ought to see that "it is worse than a crime, it is a 
blunder," as Napoleon once said of some error in state policy. 
But the fact is, self-interest never can be very much enlightened. 
All true vision derives its clearness from the heart. 

If ever this truth were legibly written on the face of the 
earth, it is inscribed on Virginia. No State in the Union has 
superior natural advantages. Look at its spacious* bays, its 
broad and beautiful rivers, traversing the country in every 
direction; its majestic forests, its grand and picturesque 
mountains, its lovely and fertile valleys, and the abundance of 
its mineral wealth. Words can hardly be found enthusiastic 
enough to express the admiration of Europeans, who first 
visited this magnificent region. Some say her name was given, 
"because the country seemed to retain the virgin plenty and 
purity of the first creation, and the people their primitive 
innocency of life and manners." Waller describes it thus: 

"So sweet the air, so moderate the clime, 
None sickly lives, or dies before his time, 
Heaven sure has kept this spot of earth uncurst, 
To show how all things were created first." 
X 



322 LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 

Alas, that the shores of that beautiful State should become 
the Guinea coast of the New World! — our central station of 
slavery and the slave trade ! Of the effects produced, we need 
not question abolitionists, for we learn them from the lips of 
her own sons. John Randolph said, years ago, that he 
"expected soon to see the slaves of Virginia advertising for 
runaway masters." Washington, in a letter to Sir John 
Sinclair, describes the land in the neighbourhood of Mount 
Vernon as exhausted and miserable. He alludes to the fact, 
that the price of land in Pennsylvania and the free States, then 
averaged more than twice as much as land in Virginia : 
"because," says he, "there are in Pennsylvania laws for the 
gradual abolition of slavery; and because foreign emigrants are 
more inclined to settle in free States." 

Of the multitude of foreigners, who daily seek an asylum 
and home in the empire of liberty, how many turn their steps 
to the region of the slave ] None. There is a malaria in the 
atmosphere of those regions, which the new comer shuns, as 
being deleterious to his views and habits. See the wide- 
spreading ruin, which the avarice of our ancestral government 
has produced in the South, as witnessed in a sparse population 
of freemen, deserted habitations, and fields without culture. 
Strange to tell, even the wolf, which, driven back long since 
by the approach of man, now returns, after the lapse of a 
hundred years, to howl over the desolations of slavery." 

The allusion to the wolf, is no figure of speech. Wild beasts 
have returned to extensive districts of Virginia, once inhabited 
and cultivated. 

Some eighteen years ago, when I lived in the dream-land of 
romantic youth, and thought nothing of slavery, or any other 
evils that infest the social system, an intelligent young lady 
from the South told me an adventure, which made a strong 
impression on my imagination. She was travelling with her 
brother in the interior of eastern Virginia. Marks of diminish- 
ing prosperity everywhere met their view. One day, they 
entered upon a region which seemed entirely deserted. Here 
and there some elegant villa indicated the former presence of 
wealth ; but piazzas had fallen, and front doors had either 
dropped, or hung suspended upon one hinge. Here and there 
a stray garden-flower peeped forth, amid the choking wilder- 
ness of weeds ; and vines, once carefully trained on lattices, 
spread over the ground in tangled confusion. Nothing disturbed 



LETTEiiS FROM NEW YORK. 323 

the silence, save the twittering of some startled bird, or the 
hoot and scream of gloomy wood creatures, scared by the 
unusual noise of travellers. 

At last, they came to a church, through the roof of which a 
a tree rooted in the central aisle beneath, sent up its verdant 
branches into the 'sunlight above. Leaving their horse to 
browse on the grass-grown road, they passed into the building, 
to examine the interior. Their entrance startled innumerable 
birds and bats, which flew circling round their heads, and 
through the broken windows. The pews had coats-of-arm 
blazoned on the door-panels, but birds had built their nests in 
corners, and grass had grown u]) through the chinks of the 
floor. The handsome trimmings of the pulpit were so covered 
witli dust, as to leave the original colour extremely doubtful. 
On the cushion lay a gilt-edged Bible, still ojDen, probably at 
the place where religious lessons had last been read. 

I have before my mind's eye a vivid picture of that lonely 
church, standing in the silence of the forest. In some moods 
of mind, how pleasant it would be to spend the Sabbath there 
alone, listening to the insects singing their prayers, or to the 
plaintive voice of the ring-dove, coming up from the inmost 
heart of the shaded forest, 

"Whose deep, low note, is like a gentle wife, 
A poor, a pensive, yet a happy one, 
Stealing, when daylight's common tasks are done, 
An hour for mother's work ; and smging low. 
While her tired husband and her children sleep." 

In the stillness of Nature there is ever sometliiug sacred , 
for she pleadeth tenderly with man that he will live no more 
at discord with her; and, like the eloquent dumb boy, she 
ever carrieth "great names for God in her heart." 

" 'Xeath cloistered boughs, each floral bell that swingeth, 
And tolls its perfume on the passing air. 
Makes Sabbath in the fields, and ever ringeth 
A call to prayer." 

I can never forget that adventure in the wilderness. There 
is something sadly impressive in such complete desolation, 
where life has once been busy and gay — and where human 
pride has inscribed its transient history with the mouldering 
insignia of rank and wealth. 

The ruin and the unbroken stillness seemed so much like a 
work of enchantment, that the travellers nanied the place The 



324: LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 

Hamlet of the Seven Sleepers. At the next inhabited village, 
they obtained a brief outline of its history. It had been 
originally settled by wealthy families, with large plantations 
and numerous slaves. They were Virginian gentlemen of the 
olden school, and would have felt themselves disgraced by the 
modern business of breeding slaves for market. In fact, strong 
family pride made them extremely averse to sell any slave that 
had belonged to their ancestors. So the slaves multiplied on 
their hands, and it soon took "all their corn to feed their hogs, 
and all their ho2:s to feed their neQ:roes." Matters grew worse 
and worse with these old families. The strong soil was at last 
exhausted by the miserable system of slavery, and would no 
longer yield its increase. What could these aristocratic gentle- 
men do for their sons, under such circumstances? Plantations 
must be bought for them in the far Southwest, and they must 
disperse, with their trains of human cattle, to blight other new 
and fertile regions. There is an old superstition, that no grass 
grows where the devil has danced; and the effects of slavery 
show that this tradition, like most others, is born of truth. It 
is not, as some suppose, a special vengeance on the wicked 
system; it is a simple result of the universal and intimate 
relation between spirit and matter. Freedom writes itself 
on the earth in growth and beauty; oppression, in dreariness 
and decay. If we attempt to trace this effect analytically, 
we shall find that it originates in landholders too proud 
to work, in labourers deprived of healthful motive, in the 
inevitable intermediate class of overseers, who have no 
interest in the soil or the labourers ; but whose pay depends on 
the forced product they can extort from both. Mr. Faulkner 
has stated the case impressively: "Compare the condition of 
the slave-holding portion of this commonwealth, barren, deso- 
late, and seared as it were by the avenging hand of Heaven, 
wdth the description which we have of this same country from 
those who first broke its soil. To what is this change 
ascribable? Alone to the blastinoj and witherinsf effects of 
slavery: To that vice in the organisation of society, by which 
one half its inhabitants are arrayed in interest and feeling 
against the other half; to that condition of things, in which 
half a million of your popukition can feel no sympathy with 
society, in the prosperity of which they are forbidden to par- 
ticipate, and no attachment to a Government at whose hands 
they receive nothing but injustice." 



LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 325 

Dr. Meade, in the records of an official tour through the 
State, speaks of great numbers of churches fiillen absolutely 
into ruin, from the gradual impoverishment of surrounding 
estates, and the consequent dis})ersion of the population. 

The church, where General Washington was baptized, fell 
into such complete decay, that it was a resort for beasts and 
birds. It was set on fire a few years ago, lest the falling in of 
the roof should kill the cattle, accustomed to seek shade and 
shelter there. 



LETTER XYII. 

June 24, 1844. 

At a second-hand book-stall, I picked up a volume of Tieck, 
and saw in it the name of Leopold Sturmvogel. It excited 
deep melancholy within me, as it does to see a portrait in an 
auction room. I knew the hand-writing well; and a host of 
recollections, pleasant and painful, were twined round that 
name, which lay there, like obsolete hieroglyphics, among the 
literary rubbish. Leopold was from the Black Forest of 
Germany, and had a thoroughly German face. He was one of 
the most remarkable men I ever knew; remarkable for opposite 
qualities of almost equal strength. Unfortunately for him, 
they did not harmonise, as in some characters, but fought 
incessantly, and the victory was always alternating. His wife 
used to say that there was enough in him to make ten angels and 
ten devils ; and all who knew him felt the truth of the remark. 
At one period of his life, he was a thorough infidel; but 
reverence and love of the marvellous afterward swayed him to 
the opposite extreme, so that he had an almost oriental belief 
in omens. At the time he was most in the habit of visiting me, 
I had a black cat of great vivacity, with eyes that glowed like 
burning charcoal. One night, wdien he was at table with us, 
this cat sprung directly through the blaze of the lamp, out of 
the open window. After that performance, he firmly believed 
her to be the embodiment of some evil spirit. If she were in 
the room wdien he entered, he left the house immediately; and 
if she crossed his path out of doors, he always turned back. 
In the midst of rational conversation, I have seen his large 
mouth begin to work in the strangest fashion, and after a 
few minutes, he would turn round with angry gestures, fiercely 



326 LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 

exclaiming, ''Get thee gone, thou cursed spirit! "Wherefore 
art thou tempting me?" If I asked an exphmation, he would 
briefly rej)ly, "The spirit knows what I mean, and that is 
sufiicient. " He would then resume his discourse, in the coolest 
and most philosophic manner imaginable. He came one day, 
when I was Avriting Philothea, and asked me if I liad walked 
out to enjoy the genial atmosphere. I answered, "No; I have 
been all day in Athens; and so intently has my mind been 
occupied, that I almost feel as if I had actually talked with 
Plato." "And why should you not," rejoined he: "I know 
not what should hinder Plato from coming to you, or you from 
going to Plato." 

Many were the stories he told of witchcraft and second sight. 
One concerning an old burgomaster of Stuttgard, with whose 
family he was well acquainted, I distinctly remember. The 
burgomaster was an honest, good man, who voluntarily resigned 
his ofiice, because he thought a younger man could better fidfil 
its duties. In his retirement, he devoted himself to the 
cultivation of his garden. On one side, it was enclosed by the 
lofty city wall ; on the other, by fences, which separated it from 
neighbouring gardens, and a sjoacious shooting ground. The 
old man was one day busily grafting a tree, when, raising his 
eyes suddenly, he saw an infant grandchild, of whom he was 
very fond, standing on the most dangerous part of the wall, 
smiling and beckoning with his finger. The city wall was forty 
or fifty feet high ; and as it was impossible to reach the child, 
he hastened through the garden gate to call some one to his 
assistance. Pale and agitated, he entered the house, and 
exclaimed reproachfully to the mother, "How could you let 
that little one go forth alone?" His daughter pointed to the 
child asleep in his cradle, and replied, " He has not been out of 
my sight, father." Much surprised, he returned to the garden. 
During his absence, a bullet from the neighbouring shooting 
ground had gone directly through the body of the tree he had 
been ingrafting. This circumstance made a strong imjiression 
on the family, and they often mentioned it before Leopold, who 
believed it to be an especial interposition of Providence. I 
said the child was his grandfather's schutzengel. Leopold 
smiled, and said, "I never knew you guilty of anything so 
wretchedly elaborate; you have made a pun composed of three 
languages. Schutzengel is the German for Guardian-angel. 
The first syllable sounds like the English word shoots, and in 



LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 327 

Swiss it means shot." His own wit was quick and glancing. 
One day, I showed him some flowers from a friend, saying 
they were gathered behind Trenton Falls. "Indeed," said he, 
"they are so beautiful, I should have supposed they were 
gathered before the fall." 

A tendency to fill everything with spiritual life, showed 
itself continually in his most casual remarks. When I walked 
with him, I was much amused by this all-pervading vitality of 
his imagination. He talked of the stars winking at each other, 
of the waterfall roaring because it had a tumble, of the bees 
carrying messages between the flowers, and of rivulets hurrying 
home to their mothers. Never did any old Greek, with a 
dryad for every tree, and a nymph for every fountain, fill 
nature so full of life. 

His genius would have produced great things in many 
departments, if he could but have concentrated its powers, and 
controlled the raging strife of his passions. He wrote in a 
strong German style, and with great poetic beauty. He would 
thunder forth Kurner's war-songs, and Swabian drinking-songs, 
with a voice sufliciently deep and powerful to outroar the bass 
of the German Ocean in a storm. Yet his drawings were 
characterised by exquisite delicacy and grace, with here and 
there a fairy-like touch of the supernatural. At oil-painting, 
too, he tried his hand. His first picture of this kind was very 
beautiful in conception, though imperfectly executed. Under 
a venerable old oak^ sat an aged man, leaning his hands upon a 
stafil His ear was raised, as if listening, and a smile gleamed 
all over his furrowed face ; for between the parting clouds, over 
his head, appeared the angel figure of Hope, touching the strings 
of her golden harp. 

Yet this poetic spiritualism was united with the strongest 
animal propensities. As he sang, so did he eat and drink; 
enouofh for six common men. Amonfj the other contradictions 
of his nature was a blind superstitious submission, in some 
frames of mind, and, at others, a perfectly fierce and lawless 
will, that knocked down all regulations of order or custom. 
No mood was so permanent with him as an extreme im- 
patience and dislike of those forms of theology called 
rationalism. He said this class of thinkers reminded him of 
the immense round bonnets, worn by the women of Swabia. 
The wife of the burgomaster of his native city had one of such 
prodigious circumference, that she could not enter the doors of 



328 LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 

the Gothic church. A meeting was accordingly held, to decide 
whether Mrs. Burgomaster should abate her head-gear, or 
whether the doors of the church should be widened for her 
accommodation. "And so," said he, "these believers in the 
dignity of human nature must either doff their glory, or find 
the doors of religion too narrow for their entrance." 

Sometimes he devoutly wished for a priest to whom he could 
confess all his sins; such need had he of some outward 
representation of the divine, at whose feet he could humble 
himself in humility and faith. Yet nothing could exceed his 
strenuous resistance to all. bounds and limits, and to all restrain- 
ing influence. One day, I asked him to go with me to hear a 
very eloquent speaker. "I will not go," he bluntly replied: 
"I don't like eloquence. It interferes with my free-will." Once 
he happened to board with several gentlemen, who abjured 
animal food. They said nothing to him about his ravenous 
appetite; but their silent example made him uneasy. He 
fretted and fumed, as if they intended a personal insult by 
their abstinence. "They would have me live on Canary- 
seed," said he; "but I will let them see I am no bird. I can 
eat a vast deal from opposition." 

Alas, he could drink a vast deal, too ; and the admirable 
powers of his noble mind were wasted and ruined by the vicious 
practice. During the first years of our acquaintance, he was 
seldom intoxicated. When he was so, his drunkenness, like 
everything else he did, had a touch of genius in it. He w^ould 
say the wildest, the richest, the funniest, the most grotesque 
things. But his prevailing mood of mind at such times was 
religious. He would chant psalms and glorifications, by the 
hour together; and the tears would flow down his cheeks, as 
he repeated his mother's dying prayers, and her last words to 
liim: "Leopold, my child, try to be good," With strange 
perversity, as if mocking the angel that never left his wayward 
heart, he would maintain that a man was never so spiritual- 
minded, as when he was drunk. He often gravely asserted, 
that his motive for drinking to excess, was to rise out of all 
duplicity and hypocrisy, and thus bring himself into closer 
relations with divine beings. 

In personal aj^pearance, he was unusually })lain. His face 
was broad, his mouth immensely wide, his figure inelegant, and 
his motions awkward. He had no skill in flattery, and was 
proverbially forgetful of the conventional courtesies of life ; yet 



LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 329 

he had singular power over the hearts of women. I ascribed 
it to a magnetic influence from his electric genius and power of 
character. Whatever might be the cause, it was more easy 
for him to excite a strong interest, than it was for numy 
handsomer and more graceful men. 

The manner of his marriage was as eccentric as his other 
proceedings. A dark-eyed young lady called upon me one day, 
and introduced herself by saying she was the daughter of a 
widow, an intellectual and cultivated woman, once prosperous, 
but now in reduced circumstances. She said she thought I 
might induce the booksellers to employ her mother in transhiting 
foreign languages. As we talked together, my visitor took up 
a Catholic book, that lay on the table, and expressed a strong 
wish that she could believe in that religion. "I am so weary 
of controversy," said she; "I do so long for the quiet luxury of 
undoubting faith." My friend I^eopold came in soon after she 
left, and I quite accidentally mentioned her remarks to .him. 
His uncouth countenance absolutely shone, as he jumped up, 
and exclaimed eagerly, "Who is this? This is my wife. Now 
I know why doves flew before me, this morning, till I came to 
your door." I told him the name and residence, in a neigbouring 
town. ''I will go this afternoon," said he: "I will carry a 
piece of linen, and ask them to make it up for me." "Perhaps 
they might be oli'ended by such a request," replied I: "Having 
once been in prosperous circumstances, they may possibly be 
sensitive and proud; and then the young lady's state of feeling 
may arise from being in love with a Catholic." To all my 
suggestions, he answered, "No matter; I will try. It was not 
without significance that the doves flew before me this morning." 
Aw^ay he went; and when evening was closing in, he came 
back covered with dust, but full of animation. Before he took 
off his hat, he exclaimed, joyfully, "I. have seen my wife. I 
walked out there, and knocked at the house you described. A 
dark eyed girl oiDened the door. I told her I came from you, 
and that I wanted a piece of linen made up. She answ^ered 
coldly that they did not take in sewing, and shut the door. I 
turned away much disappointed; but presently I heard a soft 
footfall on the grass, and a sweet voice saying, ' Sir ! Sir ! ' I 
looked behind me, and saw a maiden with large, blue, tender 
eyes, who said, ' Sir, my sister was not in the right to turn you 
away so abruptly. Mother says she would be very glad to 
make the linen.' This was my wife," 



330 LETTERS FROM XEW YORK. 

A fortnight from that time they were engaged, and in a few 
months they were married. The widowed mother, being 
informed of Leopold's intemperate habits, entreated them to 
wait, at least a year. But remonstrances were useless. He 
made the most earnest promises of complete reformation, and 
the infatuated girl believed him. The mother urged another 
strong objection. "My daughter had a very severe fever a few 
years ago," said she; ''and it has left her in a very singular 
state of nervous disease. She is subject to occasional fits of 
total oblivion." "That is another proof that we were made for 
each other," replied the impatient lover; "for I, too, have no 
m.emory." 

It was a sad wedding to all but the parties themselves. 
They were in a state of ecstatic happiness, to which wealth 
could have added nothing. For a few months, the influence of 
domestic life seemed to quiet the turbid restlessness of 
Leopold's character, and his animal nature was brought into 
more harmonious subordination to his high and noble qualities. 
But the love of stimulating liquors soon returned upon him. 
One day, at twilight, I went to their humble apartments. The 
tea-kettle was singing before the fire, the table was spread for 
supper, and books and drawings were carelessly scattered over 
the sofa. The young wife sat alone at the window, and there 
was an expression in her eye, which made me feel sad and 
fearful. It was as if she slept with her eyes open. "When I 
spoke, she answered me coherently, but the next moment, she 
evidently forgot what she had said. " Did Leopold go to church 
yesterday'?" said I: "It stormed so, that I suppose you did not 
go." "I don't know," replied she; and looking out vaguely in 
the dim twilight, she added, in a low thrilling voice, " It seems 
to me that I remember being alone in a storm." 

She was a pretty young creature, with a complexion like the 
Sweet Pea blossom, beautiful eyes, and a poetic expression. 
To see her in this strange trance, was exceedingly mournful. 
I waited, and waited, in hopes her husband would return ; but 
he came not. At last, I was ol)liged to leave her. As I 
went out, I met Leopold, reeling as if he had laid a wager to 
walk on both sides of the way at once ; a process which was in 
fact emblematical of his walk through life. In the evening, I sent 
a friend to ascertain whether they were safe. They were both 
asleep, and people in the house had taken care of light and fire. 

Soon after the birth of their first child, I left that vicinity. 



1 



LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 331 

and heard little of them for a year and a half. When I 
returned, my first inquiries was concerning their welfare. I 
heard dismal stories of extreme poverty, of desolate removes 
from one j^lace to another, of increasing tendency to oblivion in 
the wife, and drunkenness in the husband. Under the pressure 
of want and wretchedness, her mind wandered more wildly 
than ever. In states of mental aberration, she had attempted 
to cut her own throat, and to throw her child from the roof of 
the house. The good mother had exerted herself for tliem, 
with most disinterested patience, but he forbade her the house, 
and she was at last reluctantly driven away by his drunken 
fury. Benevolent friends were not wanting; but their efforts 
were useless, because everything they gave was sold for drink. 

Having discovered their residence, I went to see them; and 
never shall I forget that visit. The pretty young wife opened 
the door. Her long fair hair was matted, like tangled tow. 
Her gown was covered with grease and dirt, and hung about 
her in ffying tatters. In the middle of the room was a cooking 
stove surrounded with spiders, skillets, and kettles, just as the 
process of cooking had left them. On the table, lay a hat, full 
of tipsy indentations, and crusted with mud. A pitcher 
without a nose, and a jug without a handle, stood near by on a 
beautiful crayon drawing of the head of Plato. In one corner 
of the room, was a heap of chips and saw-dust, from which 
protruded an exquisitely graceful arm, the fragment of a small 
statue. Behind the chips, rose a battered plaster-cast of the 
God of Silence, with finger on his lip, and a dusty cobweb 
woven from hand to shoulder. On a broken stool, lay a 
handsome copy of Bichter's Titan, a pair of compasses, and a 
sheet of soiled paper, which seemed to contain diagrams to 
illustrate the relation between music and colours. 

I covered my eyes and wept. Never before had I seen 
genius in such ruin. Never had I witnessed the godlike and 
the bestial of our nature brought into such painful contrast. 
The poor young mother seemed to guess my feelings, for she 
wept, too; and taking my hand, she led me to a small 
adjoining room, where the babe slept, like a little angel in a den 
of animals. 

Leopold was not at home; but he returned my visit that 
same day. The intellectual exj)ression of his countenance was 
fast changing into the grossness of sensualism ; but his conver- 
sation indicated the same stranw mixture of liii^h and low 



332 LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 

qualities. He spoke of his wife's oblivious state of mind as a great 
mercy. " She would be much more unhappy, if it were not for 
this kind provision of our Heavenly Father," said he; "and this 
the Lord knew, when he led her to me.'"' When I spoke of their 
little boy, his eyes filled with tears. "Ah!" said he, " if you 
only knew that sweet little creature." " It is very beautiful to see 
how Divine Providence watches over that child. Small as he 
is, he has learned to take care of himself; and however cold or 
hungry he may be, he never cries. He undresses himself at 
night, and creejDS into his little bed alone. In the morning, if 
he finds that his mother is oblivious, and I am stupid, 
he sjDeaks no more to us ; but v/ith his little fingers he 
contrives to pin his clothes, and get a porringer of water, to 
dip his crust in. It is very beautiful to see how Providence 
takes care of him." 

I never heard a description of forlorn childhood, that so 
affected my imagination and my heart. I cannot even now 
recall it without tears. But the desolate little one, with his 
patient eyes and sad voice, made friends all round the neigh- 
bourhood. The roughest boys shared their bread and cake 
with him, and the Sunday School children joined together to 
knit stockings and make comfortable garments for him. 

After a long separation from this unfortunate family, I heard 
that they had removed to New York. Leopold's uncommon 
intellectual powers attracted the attention of a wealthy gentle- 
man, much interested in the temperance cause. Over and over 
again, he paid his debts, and supplied his family with the 
necessaries of life, in hopes to obtain a salutary influence over 
him. At first, Leopold resisted this influence, as an inter- 
ference with his free-will; but at last, kindness overcame him. 
He warmly pressed his benefactor's hand, and with a choked 
voice said, "Because you have not reproached me with my 
many faults, because you have not required me to sign the 
pledge, in return for your generosity and forbearance, therefore 
I loill sign it." He did so, and remained perfectly temperate 
for about a year. 

Bejoiced at these tidings, I sent for him soon after I arrived 
in New York. But, alas ! the change in him was not such as 
I hoped. His old habits had returned upon him with redoubled 
power. He had become bloated and pimpled, and his breath 
redolent of gin. The story he told was a melancholy one. He 
had left his family, in order to provide a place for them in this 



LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 333 

city. At parting, he gave his wife three gokleii eagles, which 
he had earned by teaching German. He afterwards had reason 
to conclude that in her ohlivious states, she had spent them 
for quarters of dollars. When he had made the necessary 
arrangements, and wrote for her to come to him, he received 
no reply. He sent to a friend beseeching him to ascertain why 
she did not write. Upon inquiry, he found that she was gone, 
no one knew whither. The house was occupied, and the 
furniture gone. The delicate young creature was at last found 
with her three little ones, in an asylum for the poor. From 
her account, it seemed that they had been reduced to absolute 
starvation; that she had sold every thing for food, and then 
wandered away. Where she had been for three weeks, she 
never could tell. The veil of oblivion had fallen too heavily 
over her diseased memory. 

There were kind hearted people, who would not have 
permitted all this, if they had known of it. But Leojoold's 
inveterate habits of intoxication had exhausted the patience 
even of his best friends. His wife would not consent to leave 
him, and his waywardness and pride defeated all eflbrts to 
assist his family separate from himself. He repelled those who 
would have served him wisely, and persisted in considering 
himself the injured victim of an unjust world. 

When he told me the story of his wife's destitution and 
wandering, two years after it occurred, he was in a state 
of such intoxicated excitement, that he made the most wrath- 
ful gestures, and frequently thrust his clenched fist into my 
face. I had sometimes been afraid of him, in former years, when 
he was very much under the influence of strong drink ; but by 
preserving a calm exterior, and speaking to him gently, I had 
been able gradually to soothe him into a compliance with my 
advice. But I had no such influence now. I had always 
indulged the hope that patient friendship might help him to 
gain the victory over himself; but I reluctantly yielded to the 
conviction that his case was a hopeless one. So many broken 
resolutions had seriously impaired his moral strength. His 
constitution was shattered, and his spirits intensely depressed. 
He thought nothing could cure him but the mineral springs of 
Germany. The cold water springs of any country would have 
renovated him, if he would but have tried them perseveringly. 
But he pined for his native land, and his countrymen assisted 
him to return thither. The last I heard of him, he was ill in an 



334 LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 

hospital there, and his chiklren were near by, provided for by 
benevolent institutions. I never think of his gentle little boy, 
without an earnest wish that it was in my power to make 
his prospects in life more cheerful than their early promise. 



LETTER XVIII. 

July 5, 1844. 

Were you ever in Babylon on the Fourth of July *? If you were 
not, and have ears as sensitive as mine are to sharp sounds, you 
may thank your stars. To all such it is a day to be endured. 
The big guns from the ships come booming through the air Avith 
a majestic sound; but the crashing musketry, the snapping 
pistols, and the spitfire crackers, are intolerable. From peep 
of dawn till midnight, this is like a city besieged. Muskets are 
fired from the front doors, and pistols from the windows. 
Kockets whiz into your bedchamber, blazing grasshoppers jump 
at you on the sidewalk, fiery serpents chase you across the- 
streets. From the alderman to the chimney-sweeper, every one 
lets off his patriotism in gunpowder. It is as if the infernal 
regions had been opened, and lit up for a holiday; and more 
reasons than one would they have for making a jubilee of our 
o-loiious Fourth. The father of falsehood knows full well that 
"all lies come home to roost;" and thus he foresees rare 
sport in this republic. Well may he place finger on nose, and 
make significant gyrations, when he hears it pompously pro- 
claimed to the world, that here all men are free. 

But with all the hurly-burly and the sham of our national 
festival, there is doubtless mixed a genuine reverence for man, 
and noble aspirations for a world-wide freedom. If the bells 
and the rockets, the guns and the orations, add one particle to 
the love of liberty, or a sincere appreciation of its blessings, 
they are not expended in vain. 

It was an exciting page in the strange volume of human-nature, 
to see the city pouring itself into the country, and the country, 
led by the same restless love of change and excitement, pouring 
itself into the city. The boats, constantly going and returning, 
were freighted so deep with human beings, that they sunk to the 
the water's edge. The farmers rushed in for noise and fun, 



LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 335 

and the citizens ruslied out for quiet and fresh air. All 
were running for feasting and glorification somewhere. 

Though my ears were pained, my eyes received splendid 
comjDensation. It is difficult to conceive of any thing more 
gorgeously beautiful than the fireworks in the evening. They 
went up from every section of the city, and curtained it over 
with a tent of flame. The great number and variety made the 
spectacle absolutely sublime. Seen from a commanding height 
on the other side of the ferry, it was more beautiful than any 
thing I ever imagined of fairy-land. Rockets with twining 
serpents, rockets with glittering meteors, rockets with metallic, 
many-coloured stars, rockets with silver rain, rockets with 
golden rain, went up into the air incessantly, and played and 
mingled there, and sprinkled themselves out in a whirl of 
gems. 

To increase the beauty of the scene, this dance of diamond 
sparkles was reflected from the bosom of the waters. The 
radiant stars shone calmly amid the fiery frolic, like poetic 
souls, high above the rush of things local and ephemeral, on the 
serene height of solitary wisdom, brooding over primeval beauty 
and eternal truth. Their faces were sometimes hidden by the 
blaze and glitter of the fireworks; but the whizzing coruscations 
were soon scattered into darkness, while the silent stars shone 
forever. 

The earth, too, had its fire-crown, as well as the regions of 
upper air. Roman candles lighted the shrubbery of our parks, 
like one of Martin's pictures. As they went out, trees came 
up, blossoming with roses of many-coloured flame. By their 
side, rose the Cross of Malta in silver fire, with a central cross 
of crimson and purple. Green Palm Trees rushed up, and 
anon changed into gay streamers. The Saxon Glory revolved 
its gorgeous wheel of ever-changing crimson, green, and purple. 
There was the Lone Star of Texas, and the Mexican Sun 
radiating golden fire. The Temple of the Union, with the 
figures 1776 in silver lance-w^ork, with a crown of twenty-six 
stars of silver fire, the whole seen on a back-ground of revolving 
flames, like a curtain of resplendent gems. 

The fireworks in the Park, and Washington Parade Ground, 
were at the expense of the city, which appropriated two 
thousand dollars for that purpose. From Niblo's and Castle 
Garden, the disjjlay was, as usual, extremely grand. Vauxhall, 
and other smaller parks and gardens, gave their share of 



336 LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 

dazzling beauty. From private dwellings, in every street^ 
wheels, serpents and fountains went up from roofs and piazzas, 
so that the entire city seemed on fire. It was, in fact, on fire 
at twelve different places during the day. But what is 
independence good for, if we are not allowed to burn our 
neighbours' roofs over their heads 1 The entire expense of the 
day's fireworks, throughout the city, is estimated by those who 
know at from thirty to fifty thousand dollars "? 

I was much amused by one use to which they were applied. 
A gentleman in the vicinity was invited to deliver a Fourth of 
July Address, on a bench in the open air. Probably his 
mother had never taught him the proverb, "It is a good 
thing to say nothing, when you have nothing to say." The 
sovereign people were impatient for fire ; and not finding 
enough of it in his discourse, they began to let ofi" squibs and 
crackers. This hint not being taken, flaming grasshoppers 
began to jump up his coat ; rockets rushed over his head ; 
wheels whirled round him ; and fiery serpents twined about 
his feet; till he stood, like theatrical representations of Satan, 
in a sheet of fire. These finally overj)owered his patriotic 
exertions, he leaped from his pedestal, and went off" in a flame 
more brilliant than his eloquence. 

Independent Day inspires a general magnificence of sentiment 
and expansion of soul. At night, I heard a merry son of Erin 
under my window, proclaiming aloud, " Damn the Illative 
American Party ! I could whip 'em all ; every mother's son 
of 'em." Unluckily, the watch-house was near. A Native 
American watchman overheard poor Patrick's glorification, and 
seized him. He, in the fulness of his overflowing good nature,^ 
began to apologise. " And indade," says he, " it was only a 
bugbear I wanted to w^hip. It w^as no mankind, at all, at 
all" 

I was sorry to see that his explanation was not accepted. 
He did not seem really intoxicated, but only running over 
with victorious feeling. This may surely be forgiven, on a day 
whose moral teaching is, that it is glorious to whip the world, 
and crow over it forever afterward. 

The ungenerous strife, which has of late been going on 
between natives and foreigners, has been painful to me. A 
spirit of clanship is opposed to the world-embracing love of the 
Christian religion, and is at variance with those free principles 
on which our government must stand, or fall to the ground. 



LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 337 

It is not American freedom for which our fathers struggled ; 
but the principle of freedom. 

The naturarlisation laws doubtless need amendment. Political 
demaofosfues have availed themselves of the influx of imorant 
foreigners, to efiect their own sellish purposes. As soon as an 
Irishman lands, they pounce upon him, and urge him into 
citizenship and political action, whether he wishes it or not. 
The Irish hold the balance of power in this city, and their 
favour being much courted, corruption is the inevitable result. 
I will not endeavour to distribute the blame, or to measure the 
extent of the evil ; but some of the means used to remove it 
are obviously neither liberal nor wise. Banners with provoking 
and contemptuous mottoes, have already given rise to a a great 
deal of fighting and quarrelling. It is not easy to calculate the 
evil effect of these bitterly expressed prejudices on the education 
of the young. 

' ' For character groweth day by day, and all things aid it in unfolding ; 
And the bent unto good or evil may be given in the hours of infancy. 
Scratch the green rind of the sapling, or wantonly twist it in the soil, 
The scarred and crooked oak will tell of thee for centuries to come." 

If ever the evil days of civil strife come upon us, we shall 
find that these party j^rocessions and scornful banners have 
sown seed for a danijerous harvest. 

Prejudice and passion on one side always excite it on the 
other. The assumption of superior purity or merit, on the 
part of native Americans, at once rouses a similar spirit in the 
foreign population, till they are all ready to drink the famous 

Hibernian toast, " One man is as good as another, and a 

sight better." 

The drollest manifestation I have heard, was an anecdote of 
a young loafer, a native born, but of Irish parentage. Being 
out late in the evening, his father inquired where he had been. 
He replied, "To a Native American meeting;'' and received a 
whipping for his impertinence. "I don't care a copper for the 
flogging," said the juvenile patriot; "but to be struck by a 
cursed foreigner is too bad." 

A very large proportion of our population is nearly in the 
same condition as the boy; for if our fathers were natives, very 
few of our grandfjxthers were. Indians were the only real 
"native Americans;" and how have they been treated by 
foreigners, who overflowed the fair heritage of their fathers? 

In one place, I heard a Protestant lady sternly reproving an 

Y 



338 LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 

Irish woman, for selling apples on Sunday. "This will soon 
be put down," said she "You Catholics won't be allowed to 
desecrate the Sabbath much longer." An observation which 
doubtless made the old woman resolve that she loould sell apples 
on Sunday, whether it suited her own convenience or not. 

A man attempting to pass an old woman in a crowd, cried, 
"Get out of the way there, you old Paddy." 

"And indade I won't get out of your way; I'll get right in 
your way," said she; and suiting the action to the word, she 
placed her feet apart, set her elbows akimbo, and stood as 
firmly as a provoked donkey. She continued to stand and 
speak thus, for some time after the offending native American 
had passed. A polite word from a friend of mine soon lowered 
her elbows. "Move*?" said she; "To be sure I will, for a 
gentleman that sjoeaks as pleasant as you do." This simple 
incident contains volumes of instruction, which might be very 
useful both in the home department and the foreign. 



LETTER XYIII. 

July 12, 1844. 

I AM often asked, " How can you live contentedly in New 
York 1 You who are so deeply enamoured of nature, and who 
love all forms of beauty, with such ^jDassionate intuition'?" 
The answer is in the question; for an earnest love of beauty 
always feeds itself. You know it is told of a rustic poet, in 
the ancient time, that his envious master shut him \x^ in a 
chest; but the bees came to him, and fed him with the meal and 
dew of flowers, so that within the walls of his narrow prison he 
passed a pleasant time. Nature never forgets the soul that 
loves her, but ever sends winged missionaries, to feed it with 
the dew of flowers. 

Instead of quarrelling with New York for what it is not, I 
thankfully accept it for what it is; a beautiful city, every year 
increasing in beauty. Between the North and the East rivers, 
twelve noble avenues already stretch out their long arms into 
the woods of Harlem and Bloomingdale. These avenues are 
spacious and airy, and large handsome houses shoot up on them, 
as if by the magic of Aladdin's lamp. It refreshes the eye to 
see an increasing taste for stone or lead colour, rather than the 



LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 339 

hateful red of bricks. Yerandalis are likewise more in fashion, 
and have an exceedingly pleasant effect, with their light oriental 
oi)en-work, like Valenciennes lace in cast iron. If you pass 
along one of these avenues, in the cool hours of the afternoon, 
you may see troops of children, jumping rope and chasing hoop 
round the fountain of Union Park; and if the sun is setting 
brilliantly, rainbows dodge about on the spray, as if playing 
bo-peep with the happy little ones. 

On another of the avenues, dwells a lady, whom my heart 
blesses every time I pass her house. She has embowered it 
with vines, almost to the chimney-top; flowers peep through 
the open fence; and from the arches of the piazza she has 
suspended vases of Otaheitan geraniums, and other pendant 
vines. A person whose dwelling thus smiles upon the world, 
is a benefactor to the human race, and I feel grateful, as I do 
to one who wears a sunny face, and speaks in cheerful tones. 

Among the many attractions of this handsome city, there are 
none so universally enjoyed as those furnished by Croton water. 
We not only have the three large fountains, to refresh us with 
their graceful motions and cooling sound, but in various gardens 
and inclosures, public and private, little marble nymphs, tritons, 
and dolphins, are playing prettily with finely spun showers. I 
have often thought whether or not the clepsydra of the ancient 
Greeks could be introduced, in which minutes were marked by 
falling water drops, as by sand in the modern hour-glass. If 
the public could count time by these liquid diamonds, it would 
be a graceful invention. One thing, the peoj^le really need; 
and munificent Croton could give it as well as not. We have 
no free public baths. The wealthy can introduce water into 
their chambers, or float on the bosom of the tide, in the 
pleasant baths at the Battery; but for the poor, this is a luxury 
that can seldom, if ever, be enjoyed. Open bathing around the 
wharves is of course prohibited ; and the labouring man has to 
walk three or four miles to obtain a privilege so necessary to 
health, if the city would provide a huge covered basin, with 
a sprinkling fountain in the centre, for a shower-bath, it would 
be a noble donation to the poor. True, the water-tax already 
falls heavily on the rich ; but this would not greatly increase 
it. Luckily, our wealthy citizens did not foresee the expense 
of introducing Croton, or they would probably have been 
frightened from the undertaking. The highest estimate was 
four millions, and it has cost over fourteen millions. Voted 



340 LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 

for by thousands who have no property, and paid for by a tax 
on property, it is a pretty powerful application of practical 
democracy ; but the blessings are so great to all classes, 
that there is very little murmuring among the capitalists. 

To me, there is something extremely beautiful in the idea of 
that little river, lying so many years unnoticed among the 
hills ; her great powers as little appreciated as Shakspeare's 
were by his contemporaries, and, like him, all unconsciou.s of 
her future fame ; and now, like his genius, brought to all the 
people, a perpetual fountain of refreshment. If ever man 
deserved a monument, it is he who first devised the plan of 
bringing Croton river into the city. His statue ought to be 
crowned with water-lilies by Hygeia, and its feet be washed by 
the Naiades from their flowing urns. But it so happens 
that his name is as uncertain as the birth-place of Homer. No 
matter. If his soul is as large as his deed, he will care little 
for the credit of it. 

The prettiest of the small fountains about the city is at the 
Alhambra. This is a place for refreshment, in Broadway, gaily 
fitted up in the Moorish style, with lace-work lattices, gilded 
crescents, alcoves painted with hills and streams, and a tasteful 
collection of small statuary among shrubs and vines. Under a 
canopy in the centre, Hebe pours water from her vase into an 
open-work basket of gilded wire. A hollow gilded ball in the 
basket is kept in perpetual motion by the column of water, as 
if tossed by a Chinese juggler. The effect is very pleasing. A 
band of musicians play at the Alhambra, every summer evening. 
They must be difficult to please who are not satisfied to eat 
delicious ice-cream, with so many agreeable accompaniments of 
sight and sound. 

Facilities for hearing music constitute the greatest attraction 
of the city to me. The Philharmonic Society give four concerts 
a year ; and even your Boston critics admit that some of the 
best productions of the art are brought forward with superior 
talent and skill. It is no business of mine to settle the claims 
of rival cities. I am satisfied to enjoy, without comparing. I 
have sometimes thought too restlessly of woods and fields, in 
the presence of bricks and pavement ; but the brilliant warblings 
of Kyle's flute, has done much to reconcile me to the absence of 
the birds. 

The Italian Opera is the most patrician of our places of 
amusement. It is an extremely pretty little building, elegantly 



LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 341 

fitted up with gilded ornaments, and gaily-coloured medallions. 
No degraded corner is reserved for unveiled vice, and the 
musical dramas are never adapted to a polluted imagination, or 
a vulgar taste. Of all desecration of outward symbols, nothing 
pains me more than winged melodies gliding through impure 
words, like angels among unclean beasts. Some of the best 
productions of modern genius, are brought out at the Opera, 
and the influence cannot be otherwise than f^ivourable to the 
improvement of musical taste. 

During all the summer evenings, the admirable brass band 
plays at Castle Gardens. Its beautiful situation on the Battery, 
overhanging the bay, and commanding a view of the neigh- 
bouring islands, renders it peculiarly pleasant to sit there and 
listen to music; 

' ' While the fair waters look as if they lay 
Their cheek against the sound, and so went kissed away." 

However sultry the day may be, there is always a refresh- 
ing breeze on the Battery in the evening. Indeed, this remark 
is true of the city in general, and is doubtless one great reason 
why there is so little sickness among such a dense population. 
The natural healthiness of New York cannot be destroyed by 
the most negligent police. Thus the vigorous constitution of 
youth will throw oif a great deal of disease; and the United 
States, strong in her extent of soil and unbounded resources, 
has remained prosperous under an amount of corrupt govern- 
ment, which, in half the time, would have ruined the richest 
nation of Europe. 

At Niblo's, too, there is always an excellent orchestra; and 
it is extremely agreeable to step out of the dusty streets, into 
its fairy-land garden, with brilliant lights, shell fountains, and 
oriental shrubbery. 

Yauxhall is less artificial and showy, and being in the 
Bowery, it is out of the walk of fashionables, who probably 
ignore its existence, as they do most places for the entertain- 
ment of the people at large. They who think exclusive 
gentility worth the fetters it imj^oses, are welcome to wear 
them. I find quite enough of conventional shackles, that 
cannot be slij)ped ofl', without assuming any unnecessary ones. 
The child cares little where she gathers her flowers, or blows 
her rainbow bubbles. Every where, tlie smile of the sunshine 
makes them beautiful. 



342 LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 

There are some noble old trees at Yauxhall, which rustle 
right pleasantly in the evening breeze. Coloured lamps, 
arranged in stars and circles, light up the shrubbery with a 
fairy glimmer, and harmonies come down from a band of 
musicians among the boughs. I love to sit on one of the 
rustic benches, and gaze up into the foliage of the tall trees, 
like the dome of a dimly lighted cathedral. 

"It is a lofty feehng, yet a kind, 
Thus to be topped with leaves. And kind and great 
Are all the conquering wishes it inspires — 
Love of things lasting, love of the tall woods, 
Love of love's self, and' ardour for a state 
Of natural good, befitting such desires ; 
Towns without gain, and haunted solitude." 

Zeal for horticulture is reviving. There are many pretty 
gardens in and about the city. I went to one of these last 
week, to see, for the first time, the Night-blooming Cereus, or 
Cactus Grandiflora. It w^as the most alive thing I ever saw. 
The vine from which it sprung seemed dry as an old rope, and 
the bud was like a little tuft of tow; but the flower looked in 
my face, with such vigour and earnestness of expression, that I 
could hardly believe it to be a vegetable. It was as large as a 
pint bowl; its calyx, or outer circle of leaves, of an orange 
brown tinge; the joetals double as a pond-lily, white as the 
drifted snow, and transparent as rice paper. The feathery 
tufted stamens were likewise of the purest white; but deep 
down in its bosom was a delicate tinge of lively green, faint as 
the reflection of an emerald on a snow wreath. It is marvel- 
lous indeed, that such prodigality of beauty and vigour should 
be sent forth in the night time, and for a few hours only. 
Nature and genius are ever heedless of their jewels, and throw 
them forth in the very playfulness of profusion. This suber]> 
blossom happened to open on Sunday evening, and therefore 
some people lost the sight of it, from conscientious scruples; 
but I thought if there was anything wrong in coming out on 
Sunday, the flower would have known about it. 

Scruples of this kind by no means characterise the population 
of New York. It difiers very observably from New England 
cities, in the universal loco-motion on Sundays. Being the 
only leisure day with labourers, the temptation is strong to 
take their families into the country for fresh air and a sight 
of green fields. The huge Harlem omnibusses, with upper and 
lower decks, like a steamboat, are loaded to overflowing. It is 



LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 343 

a cheerful sight to see them returning at sunset, with green 
boughs and bouquets of flowers. To Hoboken, the boats are 
crowded all day. The average number that go over every 
pleasant Sunday, in summer, is over ten thousand; though this 
is only one of the numerous outlets from the great city. If the 
influence of groves and streams were all they sought, it would 
be well: but unfortunately, drink and cigars abound at 
Hoboken, and sounds are heard there, not at all resembling the 
worship of the heart in the stillness of nature. Indians have 
encamped there of late, and out of respect to the day, it was 
proposed that they should substitute some of their religious 
ceremonies for the war-dancing, boat-racing, and arrow-shoot- 
ing of week days. Whether this was productive of greater 
benefit to the populace, than would have been derived from 
some more civilised performances, I am unable to say. These 
Indians are on their way to Europe for exhibition. The 
Ojibbeways, who lately went there to lay some grievances 
before the British government, prove a profitable speculation; 
and Barnam, of our American Museum, who is now in England, 
immediately sent over orders to catch the wildest specimens 
that could be found, and forward them by steam. So White 
Cloud, and Walk-in-the-Rain, and other chiefs from Iowa, are 
going to shoot pennies for Victoria's amusement. This Barnam 
is a genuine Yankee, for contrivance and perseverance. He 
will circumnavigate the globe, to catch a monstrosity of any 
kind for his museum. Giants, dwarfs, double-headed calves, 
no matter what, so that it be something out of nature. He 
would mount Phoston's car to catch the comet with seven tails, 
plunge into Symme's Hole for a dog with two heads, and go 
down the Maelstrom for a sea-serpent. Where he picks up the 
''accomplished contortionist, with his learned dog Billy," and 
the "most astonishing dwarf in creation," and all the odd 
characters that walk like steam engines, and buzz like mosqui- 
toes, and have mouths like a ribbon-loom, it is difficult to 
imagine. When one stops to reflect what an important part 
popular amusements perform in the education of the people, 
this ingenious prodigality of grotesqueness becomes somewhat 
serious. 

The theatres, are obliged to resort to similar contrivances 
to keep from bankruptcy. None of them are fashionable, 
though Park theatre retains a sort of vanishing likeness of 
gentility. The Bowery lays itself out to gain the hearts of the 



344 LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 

million, by gorgeous decorations, fantastic tricks, terrific ascen- 
sions, and performances full of fire, blood, and thunder. The 
national feeling at the Bowery is prodigiously expansive. 
Some patriots presented a great, fierce, gilded eagle, that used 
to look as if he could clutch almost anything in his talons, from 
Indian babies to Mexican candlesticks. He was burnt, when 
the building took fire; but his spirit still sj)eaks in vaunting 
drama, and boastful song, and works up a patriotism of the 
audience, till they feel a comfortable assurance that every 
American can "whip his weight in wild cats." If a philosopher 
wishes to observe the ultimate product of civilisation, and has 
strong nerves, and senses not over-delicate, he may do well to 
take a seat in the pit of the Bowery, for once. It would be an 
excellent place for the Texans to send to for recruits; though 
their emissaries might sufier some inconvenience from the fact 
that the j)olice have two peeping-holes, from which they can 
reconnoitre the assemblage, revealed in the full blaze of the 
lamps. There are always plenty of idlers and loafing lads, who 
are ready for any sport. ''Let us have fun to-night, come what 
may to-morrow^," is their reckless maxim. These characters 
assist the play with a great deal of improvised merriment, and 
now and then get up a gratuitous battle, more lively than those 
on the stasfo. One of the stockholders of this theatre has made 
a fortune by furnishing excellent provisions at his victualling 
shop. Being present on one of these disturbed occasions, after 
trying every means he could think of to pacify the rioters, he 
called out, in despair, "Gentlemen, what loill you have?" 
"Boast beef," cried one; "stewed oysters," shouted another. 
This facetiousness proved a safety-valve to their turbulent 
spirits. Their steam all went off in roars of laughter, and they 
broke no lamps or scenery that night. Plutarch gives similar 
specimens of Attic merriment. _ Demos is the same good- 
natured, harem-scarum creature, whether in the theatres of 
New York or Athens. 

I speak playfully, yet the low, unsatisfactory, and demoralis- 
ing character of jDopular amusements is painful to me. Only 
by cultivation of the higher qualities of our nature, can sensual 
stimulus and fierce excitement be rendered unattractive. What 
is society doing to kindle the divine spark, which lies smoulder- 
ing in the breast of every little vagabond of this city % We 
have watch-houses and prisons, but where is our Bedemption 
Institute, like that blessed asylum at Hamburg, of which 



LETTERS FROM XEW YORK. 345 

Horace Mann tells us, in liis admirable Report on Edu- 
cation 1 

In those places so appropriately called pits, there are terrible 
unwritten epics of sin and sorrow, — of sin and sorrow 
growing out of the very passions and energies, which, in a 
right order of things, might have made those men kings 
and priests of humanity, by the only divine right, that of 
wisdom and holiness. The admitted truthfulness of Byron's 
jest, "What a pity is it, that sin is pleasure, and pleasure is a 
sin," betrays a state of society painfully unnatural and 
inharmonious. Will there ever come a time when all men 
shall be wisely cheerful and innocently gay'? A time when all 
the instincts, passions, and sentiments of our nature, shall find 
free, innocent, and healthy exercise'? 

If I were superstitious, I might think an answer was 
vouchsafed to me from the sky. As I write, the sun is setting. 
High houses between me and the west intercept his rays, so that 
only one bright gleam falls on the gilded cross of a neighbouring 
Catholic church, while the building is in the shadow of twilight. 
It stands there in beautiful distinctness, a radiant cross of fire, 
on a back-ground of dark and heavy cloud-masses. I gratefully 
accept the omen. 



LETTER XX. 

July 25th, 1844. 

Many are the playful disputes we have had together about 
genius and talent, inspiration and skill ; and always you were 
on the extreme left. I have lately written a short romance, or 
fairy legend, in which you will see plainly enough that I intend 
to represent mere skill trying to do what cannot be done 
without genius. 

The story originated thus: the German friend, who visited 
Mammoth Cave, and gave me so vivid a description of its 
wonders, was not satisfied with the account I wrote of it. 
" The fact is," said he, "such stupendous scenery as that needs 
the agency of the supernatural. Genii and spirits should be 
summoned to your aid." "Very Avell," I replied, "to please 
you, I will try to write a spirit-legend. I think it will not be 
difficult to fill the cave with supernatural presence; for such 
creations as abound there, seem like the appropriate work of 



346 LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 

powerful genii." "Yes," rejoined lie, laughing, "and one thing 
I am certain of, you cannot connect those lifeless forms, with 
Ole Bui's music, as you do everything else in creation." He 
was himself an enthusiastic admirer of the Norwegian minstrel, 
and made the remark only in playful defiance. That which he 
sportively declared I could not do, straightway danced into my 
imagination as a thing to be done. When I read the romance 
to him, some time after, I saw by the smile in his eyes, that I 
had no occasion to inform him what child of music it was, 
whose birth was to bring genius and skill into harmony with 
each other. 

I preferred the Northern mythology, as better suited to the 
wild and sublime scenery of the place. In that mythology, 
Thot is synonymous with Art, Science, or Skill. Freia is the 
goddess of Love, or Feeling; likewise of the Moon and of 
Spring; of course, she was enamoured of music. I chose her to 
represent inspiration, because genius resigns itself wholly, to a 
feeling of the beautiful, while talent tries to understand the 
beautiful by rules, and thus to imitate it. Genius gives itself 
up to its demon, as the ancients phrased it. It trusts to its 
spirit, and follows wheresoever it leads, nothing fearing. Bnt 
talent, or skill, wants to make the spirit its servant, and bind 
it within j^rescribed rules and regulations. 

Socrates speaks thus, using the word mania as we do 
inspiration: "A mania, descending from the Muses, into a soul 
tender and solitary, rouses and agitates it with Bacchic fury. 
He who aj^jDroaches the poetic gates without the mania of the 
Muses, persuading himself that he can become a poet by art 
alone, will be imperfect, both as regards his poetry and himself. 
All that can be produced by art vanishes before the offspring of 
mania." 

Music and poetry, thus divinely uttered, flow into forms ; the 
relations of which are studied, and become rules of art. T h u 
language is formed, and then grammar, which is a mere 
exposition of the relations of language. The most accurate 
knowledge of rules cannot make an eloquent writer, or even a 
good reader. It is a mere lifeless body, without a soul, if 
feeling, or expression, be wanting. And if it be true that the 
poet can produce no living beauty, without this subtle, 
indescribable essence which we call inspiration, it is still more 
true of the musical composer, because his art soars higher into 
the region of pure and infinite expression. 



LETTERS FROM MEW YORK. 347 

But I will trouble you with no more explanations. Read 
and understand for yourself 

THE ROMANCE OF THOT AND FREIA. 

The earnest longing of man to understand the origin of 
nature and himself, his anxious questioning of the infinite, and 
fearful listening to echoes from the invisible, has, in all ages 
and portions of the world, "peopled space w^ith life and mystical 
predominance . ' ' 

In the cold regions of the north, instead of Grecian Nymphs 
and Naiades, this instinct has given birth to misty spectres and 
wandering giant ghosts. Instead of Arabian Fairies, they have 
filled the earth with subterranean dwarfs and goblins of uncouth 
shape. With them, the Peris of Persia have taken a wilder 
form in the Aasgaardsreja — spirits not good enough for heaven, 
or bad enough for hell, and so condemned to ride about, while 
the world lasts, on furious black horses with red hot bridles. 

Of these, the proudest and sternest was Thot. In height and 
size, he towered a giant among the spirits around him. Strong 
and sinewy, like a man of iron, with an eye that looked as if he 
thought creation was his anvil, on which he could fashion all 
things. From the troop of the Aasgaardsreja he stood aloof, 
except when he needed them as slaves to do his bidding. In 
their restless wanderings and busy malice, he took no share, but 
ever dwelt apart, amid the cloud shadows of Nifiheim, the world 
of mist. If he had ever inhabited a body on the earth, no tra- 
dition was left concerning it. The spirits from the most ancient 
world had been questioned, but none knew whence he came. 
A tradition had been handed down among them, that he had 
never been a mortal, but was one of the council of the eternal 
gods, cast out from the glorious valley of Ida, because he had 
sought to use heavenly arcana to advance his own powers, in 
opposition to the Supreme. The boldest durst ask him no 
questions of his origin ; but the dark spirit knew well their 
tradition concerning liim. 

Gloomily and moodily, dwelt he amid the fogs of Nifiheim, 
and the burden of his thought was ever, " Why cannot I make 
a world for myself? When I listened to Freia's song, in the 
Vale of Ida, it revealed to me the distances of the planets. 
From her harp, I heard the tones to which the trees grow and 
the blossoms unfold ; and with the tones came to me the prim- 
eval words, whispered into the heart of each tree, and blossom. 



348 LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 

and gem, at the moment of its creation ; the word which gave 
them being, and which they must forever obey. I burned with 
intense desire to press farther into the inmost heart of all being, 
and learn the one primeval tone, in the one primeval word, from 
which flowed the universe. Then was I exiled from the glori- 
ous valley, and giants now guard its rainbow bridge, that I 
cannot again pass over." 

The strong spirit bowed his head upon his hand, and a feel- 
ing of sorrow came over him, as he murmured, " Oh, Freia, 
would I could hear thee again ! Many of the words remain, 
but the tones are lost. Alas, that I ever wished to use them to 
compel creation." 

As he spoke, he cast his eyes toward the south, where lay 
Mispelheim, the region of warmth and light, A broad arch, 
as of burnished gold, came up from the horizon, and cast its 
splendour on the wilderness below. From the arch shot up 
vast columns of amber light, and met at the zenith of the 
heavens, in a radiant crown of revolving stars. From this de- 
scended a long waving festoon of luminous thread ; and in it 
swung, lightly as a bird in a wind-tossed vine, a woman of 
dazzling beauty. It was Freia, goddess of love and music ; she 
who carries in her heart a spark of fire from the central altar of 
the universe, and gives it forth in scintillations, which men call 
genius and inspiration. 

Thot gazed upon her with kindling eyes, and stretched his 
arms eagerly toward her. She smiled upon him, and the re- 
flection lighted up the fogs of Niflheim with a thousand rain- 
bows. '' The tones ! the tones, my beloved ! Play them again," 
exclaimed he, imploringly. She touched her harp, and the air 
was filled with its vibrations, as if the stars sang together, and 
the gentle winds breathed a soft melodious accompaniment. 
The exiled spirit listened as one entranced. The music swayed 
his soul, as the southern breeze stirs the young foliage of 
spring. " That restores to me the life and the power," said he, 
joyfully. Then came over him again the wish to compel all 
things; to create a world by his own almighty skill. " If I 
only knew the primeval word of her life," thought he, " if I 
could make her my slave, then could I easily create a fitting 
dwelling for myself, and chase those proud deities from their 
valley of golden forests, to the cold dark fogs of Niflheim." 

As these thoughts passed through his mind, the music died 
away in a wailing cadence ; light fleecy clouds fell like a cur- 



LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 349 

tain before the goddess ; the goklen arch sunk behind the hori- 
zon ; one little floating cloud caught the departing gleam, and 
lingered for a moment, then melted in the air. 

After this glorious vision, the treeless wilderness, the spectral 
rocks, the cold dark fogs, seemed more dismal than ever. Thot 
threw himself on his face, and bit the ground in gloomy stern 
defiance. Thus remained he for a long time, and the Aas- 
gaardsreja, as they passed the borders of Niflheim, said in 
whispered murmurs, "The proud one has yielded." 

But when he heard the tramp of their horses, he started on 
his feet, and stood with folded arms, looking out sullenly 
through the murky vapours, on the dreary waste around him. 
"She came when I called her; again shall she come at my 
bidding," said he, haughtily. He fixed his gaze where the 
light had vanished, and with a slow, firm voice, uttered, "Freia ! 
Life of my power, appear again !" 

When he had repeated it thrice, with strong concentration 
of soul, the edge of the horizon gleamed tremblingly, and Freia 
slowly arose ; not as before, in a luminous temple, and re- 
splendent with heavenly beauty, but faint, shadowy, and 
vanishing, like the moon-sickle veiled in clouds, as she passes 
over the western hills. " The harp ! the harp ! " said he : "I 
beseech thee, let me hear those tones again." The arms of the 
figure waved feebly, like the shadow of a vine in the moonlight, 
but there came no sound. 

The dark brow of the spirit grew darker. "Forever mocked 
with shadows!" exclaimed he angrily: "But I have learned 
somewhat of the secret I would penetrate. She came, though re- 
luctantly, at the command of my will. Is Will then the central 
life*? — the primeval word, from which electricity had being?" 

As he mused, a self-conscious smile passed over his face. 
From that day he pondered more deeply than ever the half- 
forgotten secrets of the immortal valley, and sought to complete 
his power by spells and incantations, learned from Si)ectra] 
spirits of the mist. On the sand around him were scrawled 
squares, angles, and circles ; the intervals of sound marked in 
figures ; and everywhere the algebraic X standing for the 
unknown quantity. 

At last, when he deemed the charm complete, he called the 
Aasgaardsreja, and demanded of them their strongest and 
fleetest steed. They brought him a black horse of giant size, 
but nimble as the lightning. When the spirit laid his hand 



350 LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 

upon the mane, the powerful animal trembled in every joint, 
and from his eyes went forth a lurid flame. The Aasgaardsreja 
looked at each other significantly. ^'Depart!" exclaimed Thot, 
in a thundering voice, and they scattered like the wind of a 
tempest. Then, with a deep, slow voice, he muttered the spell, 
which was to bring Freia into his power, and extort from her 
the primeval word of her being. No light came up from 
Mispelheim, no rainbows touched the fogs of Niflheim; but 
close by his side stood Freia, glittering with a cold, metallic 
splendour. He seized her, and mounting the fiery steed, went 
off like a storm-bird across the mountains and over the billows. 
A wild chorus of laughter, from subterranean spirits, rose 
from the earth, and the distant mountains broke it into mocking 
echoes. 

The horse and his rider stopped, in the midst of dense forests, 
on a far distant shore. The instant they dismounted, the 
elfish horse, with a loud impatient snort, sprung from the ground, 
and disappeared behind the horizon like a flash of lightninsf. 
Thot looked around him and sighed deeply. "We are alone in 
the New World across the ocean," said he, "of which I have 
overheard such romantic tales from the Iceland and Norwegian 
boatmen, who have been drifted to its shores. Perhaps I 
should have done well to bind the steed by a magic spell; for 
who knows whether I may not wish myself back, even to the 
fogs of Niflheim?" He gazed on the beautiful solitude with an 
oppressed feeling. "Freia," said he, soothingly, "forgive me 
that I have compelled thy service. Here will I make a world 
more beautiful than any thou hast seen. I can create all forms, 
for I have studied well the laws of their being." A peal of 
Uiughter came from under the ground, and died away in the 
distance. "Ha! subterranean spirits here, too!" he exclaimed. 
"Let them beware how they cross my path.'' 

He smiled scornfully, and stooping down marked figures on 
the ground. Then muttering an incantation with measured 
rhythm, he stamped thrice, and the earth opened, and received 
him and his companion. "Now, Freia, tune thy harp," said 
he; " for here will I fashion a world of my own; and thy tones 
must restore to me the forgotten primeval words." 

"I have no harp," replied Freia. 

"Why hast thou not brought if?" said he, angrily. 

Trembling under the glance of his fierce eyes, she answered, 
"It was not permitted." 



LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 351 

He clenched his fists, and drew his breath hard. 

"Not thus shall the gods defeat me," said he, with haughty 
defiance: "I will make for thee a harp, and on it thou shaft 
repeat the tones." 

He feshioned an instrument, and commanded her to play. 
But when she touched the strings, he knocked it rudely from 
her hand and said, " Thou art like a peasant girl with her 
langoleik.* Give me the tones I heard in Ida, or when thou 
camest to me a vision of beauty, from the golden shores of 
Mispelheim." But ever as she tried, he grew more angry. 
She wept and said, "Alas, I do not know the tones whereof you 
speak." 

He took the harp and swept the strings with a strong 
impatient hand, but the harsh sounds grated painfully on his 
ear. Leaning against a rock, he gazed upward in silent 
thought. The moon looked down upon him mournfully, 
through the cleft by which he had descended. It spoke to him 
of the vale of Ida, and showed dim forms of glory in the air. 
Oppressed with the half-revealed vision, he drew a long sigh. 
His breath passed over the strings of the harp and they gave 
^olian warblings of the half-remembered tones. With sudden 
joy, he said, " Freia, if thou hast forgiven, I can teach thee the 
tones of Ida." He touched the strings, but quite other tone.s 
came forth — tones that dwell only in the extremities of form, 
far from the central heart. He threw down the instrument, 
and buried his face in his hands. After a long time, he said, 
sadly, "Freia, if thou hast forgotten the music of our divine 
home, canst thou not at least play me the melody, which just 
now went over the harp, when I wist not of its coming?" 

"Ah, that is well," he said, as she touched the strings. 
"That is the voice of moonlight. Practise it well, Freia. I 
will learn it and repeat it to thee; and then thou Avilt not forget 
it." He took the harp and played, but Fi-eia shook her head 
and murmured, " It speaks no lonsfer what the moonlio-ht 
sung. 

"Take the accursed langoleik," he answered: "I will not 
trouble myself with its uncertain voices. I will create forms, 
and then compel the tones that give them life. But, Freia, 
thou who wert once so radiant, how dim thou art. Merely the 
gleam of thy golden hair would once have lightened all this 

* An instrument with four strmgs, used by the Norwegian peasantry. 



352 LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 

region, like the moon at its fall, and now all around thee is 
twilight shadow." Fixing his eyes upon hers, he repeated a 
spell he had learned of the Aasgaardsreja, and her form began 
to radiate a blue metallic light, 

"Now I will give thee a token of my power," he said. He 
remained silent for a long time, tracing figures on the ground; 
then to each figure he whispered a word. There was a low 
grumbling underground, which gradually increased to wild 
uproar. Freia stopped her ears, and shuddering, exclaimed 
"Surely there is a tempest near, hurling down masses of stone 
from the mountains." 

Slowly the sounds died away, rumbling in the distance. 

"Now look up," said Tliot; and a proud smile rested on his 
features. She raised her eyes. Lo! the cave in which they 
stood had stretched out interminably. High above their heads 
was a broad sky of stone, and giant piles of rock towered upward 
in wild confusion. "What think you'?" he asked. "Are 
Hurrungern, Fannarauk, or tall Skogshorn, better workman- 
ship than these mountains of mine?' 

"It seems like the dark dwellings of the elf men," replied 
Freia; "only they have pillars and thrones, and churches, in 
their strange subterranean homes." 

"Thou slialt have pillars and churches, if thou wilt," said 
the giant spirit. He retired apart, and presently there was 
heard a crackling, clinking sound. All around Freia, there 
rose suddenly shining columns, forming arches like intertwisted 
trees, with rich foliage hanging from them in fantastic festoons. 
Beneath this tracery of vines, in the centre of four massive 
columns, a grotesque chair was gradually formed, as if by 
invisible fingers. "Do the elfwomen have grander thrones 
than thaf?" he asked, exultingly. "Why dost thou not 
praise my workmanship] Is it not grand?" 

"'It is grand," replied Freia; "But all is so still and deathly 
here. If one could but see rivers glancing brightly between 
the rocks, or hear the noise of waterfalls, or the whispering of 
the dark pines." 

"Thy wish is not beyond my power," said Thot; "but I must 
speak primeval words to the springs of the upper world." 

He was absent long, and his return was preceded by a 
deafening rush and roar of waters. Pale and terrified, Freia 
said, "This sound is more awful here in the silence, than the 
thunder-voice of the Storlie-forse alone with the midnight." 



LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 353 

"Thou wouldst have rivers and cascades, and I have done 
thy Lidding/' said Tliot. He took her by the liand, and led 
her down a mountain slope. All round them was a roar of 
unseen waterfalls, and at their feet flowed a broad black river, 
over-arched with rock. Thot felt his companion tremble on 
his arm. "Thou foolish one," said he, "didst thou not ask for 
cataracts and rivers'?" 

"Yes, but there is no life here," she answered, shuddering. 
"These waters do not glance and glitter in the sunbeams. No 
white foam-mantle gleams in the moonlight. This is like 
Koldesjo, the lake with dead grey shores, where the huge 
shadows of the mountains fall forever black and cold on the 
valleys. Surely this is the dwelling of Hela, where the rivers 
are black, where clammy drops ooze from the rocks, and a 
stony wilderness, without tree or shrub, stretches itself out 
like the ocean. If there were but the least thino: alive here! 
Everything seems imprisoned." 

As she spoke, there was a thundering noise, as of immense 
rocks piled one above another. Frightened by the reverber- 
ating sounds, she sprang on the clilf above, and in wild alarm, 
leaped from precipice to precipice. Now she cast a cold light 
through chinks of rock, and now stood for a moment on some 
rugged peak, like the moon seen through clouds resting on the 
mountain top. The pale gleam that came down made a 
ghastly contrast with the dense black shadows. 

"It is indeed fearful here," said Thot; "It is true nothing 
has life in it." With clenched hands and a frowning brow, he 
moved toward the quarter whence the noise had proceeded. 
With a deeper frown, he returned and sought Freia among the 
cliffs. "Come down again, and fear nothing," he said. 
"There are giants and subterranean genii here also; and they 
will not answer to our Northern spells. But fear them not. 
They dare not contend with me. They have jailed huge rocks 
at the entrance to the upper world. They were doubtless sent 
by the tyrannous deities to imprison me, lest I bring the stars 
from their places, as I have turned the rivers by my power. 
Be it so. With the materials around me here, I can create 
what I will. And thou, dear Freia, wilt by and bye remember 
the tones of Ida, and they will glide into the forms I have made, 
and make them live. I bi'ought with me sparks of fire 
scattered from Mispclheim. Of these will I make stars, and 
fasten them in the firmament." 



354 LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 

Well pleased, lie turned to his work, and soon called her to 
look at his constellations. He lighted a torch and held it aloft, 
that she might see the shining points on a sky of rock. 

Freia smiled. "They do indeed look somewhat as I have 
seen the stars from deep gorges among the heights around 
XJsterfjell," she said. "But seest thou not that the light is on 
thy stars, not in them? There is no need of torch-light for the 
bright polar constellations, seen through their waving auroral 
veils. All thy creations are petrified. If one could but see 
anything alive ! If thy waterfalls could only scatter icy spray 
into trees, and flowers, and grapes, sach as the furious Rjukan 
wears for his winter mantle. If one could see the snow-lichen 
peep from the cievices of thy mountains, or catch even a 
glimpse of the bog-lichen, with its sickly sulphur face. For the 
sake of seeing something alive, one might even welcome the 
giant Stallo,^ and struggle with him joyfully for life or 
death." 

"Be it as thou wilt," replied Thot, impatiently. 

But she seized his arm and said, "Not the spectral giant 
with the black staff. Oh, summon not him." 

"Thou shalt have thy lichen and flowers, then," said he; 
"But come p]ay to me the melody that the moonlight breathed 
through my soul. By those silvery tones must I fashion thy 
gardens." 

She took the harp and played; but the tune came as she had 
learned it of Thot, after some of the tones had fallen out and 
been replaced by others; and neither of them now perceived 
that it was not quite the same the moonlight sung. 

As she played, he murmured charmed words, and all around 
on the naked rocks there came forth forms of exquisite beauty. 
Snow-lichen and mosses peeped out from clefts; white roses 
unfolded their pearly petals; delicate bell-shaped blossoms nodded 
on their slender stems; fir trees rose in regular crystals; with 
a rustling sound, the Indian corn sent up its magnificent leaves 
and flowing silken tassels; graj)es hung in rich clusters; and 
the walls were decorated with garlands, twined with a spark- 
ling diamond thread. 

"Now put forth all thy radiance!" said Thot; and under the 
influence of his potent spell, the figure of Freia shone like a 

* A huge ghost, which, according to popular tradition, wanders among 
Norwegian mountains. 



LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 355 

meteor. He smiled exultingly, while she clapped her hands, 
and shouted, "This is beautiful! Truly, this was born of the 
voice of moonlight ! It is splendid as Krystalberg glittering in 
the setting sun. Surely the mountain dwarfs who dwell 
there, helped thee to make these jewelled forms of grace." 

"Say rather," replied he, "that it resembles Gladheim, in the 
vale of Ida." 

But she answered, "I do not remember." 

" Dost thou not," asked he, mournfully. " Hast thou 
forgotten the Palace of Joy 1 It had well nigh gone from my 
own memory, when that song of the moonlight brought it back 
in glimpses. And see, I have created for thee another Glad- 
heim !" 

For awhile, they lived there in joy, ever adding some new 
form of beauty to their brilliant grotto. Then Thot felt as if 
he were a god. But weary at last of this fanciful play, Freia 
said, " Thy sparkling jewels are petrified light. Thy lovely 
flowers have no fragrance, and no colour." 

"It is even so," he replied, in a dissatisfied tone; "and they 
neither grow nOr reproduce themselves. Living trees and 
flowers make music as they grow. In the immortal valley, 
thy harp repeated all their tunes. If thou couldst but play 
them now, the tones would glide into those graceful forms, and 
make the beautiful petrifactions live. And oh, if I had but 
the tone that to Light gave being ! " 

AYith deep dejection, she replied, " I, too, w^ould give worlds 
to know those primeval words and tones. Often have I felt 
that I would willingly die to learn the mysteries they reveal." 

"Die!" he exclaimed. "Thou canst never die. The 
immortals know not death." He eyed her keenly, and after a 
long pause, he said, " Freia, thou hast altered strangely. The 
light of thy garments is like steel, rather than gold. Thy 
voice has changed. Thou hast forgotten the tones that filled 
me with creative life. Thy eye-glance once looked far into 
infinity ; it now rests on the surface." She was silent, and he 
continued, sternly, " Art thou a tool of the despotic gods, to 
mock me with shadows and echoes?" She trembled, and made 
no answer. " Thou shalt resume thy proper shajDe," said he, 
fiercely. " I believe that light flowed from the primeval tone 
of thy own being ; and by all the powers, I will extort it 
from thee, or chain thee forever below the bed of yon dark 
river." 



356 LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 

He fixed his eye on her intently, and said, with a powerful 
voice, " I will thee to resume thy former shape ! " 

Convulsive spasms came over her, her limbs straightened 
rigidly, and her light went out in total darkness. At the 
same instant, a vivid flash illuminated the whole grotto, and 
Thot felt himself stricken down, as by a powerful arm. He 
remained oblivious for a long time. When consciousness 
returned, he was lying on a bed of sul^Dliurous earth, and all 
around him was dense darkness and cave-stillness, broken only 
by the distant rumbling of the water-falls, and the sluggish 
murmuring of the river. Fear came over him, till the perspir- 
ation stood in large drops on his forehead. "Ihis is awful!" 
thought he. " What is my boasted creation but a tomb 1" He 
called aloud on Freia, but the distant plashing of the waters 
was his only answer. 

Gradually, the pride and strong will of his unconquerable 
spirit returned. He recalled the primeval word for fire, and 
rekindled his torch. The walls of his grotto sparkled in the 
flaring light, and there at his feet lay the corpse of a mortal 
woman. Whence came it 1 It was fearful thus to be alone 
with silence and the dead. He pondered whether this could 
be a form he had mistaken for Freia. 

" The universe is full of phantoms," he said, doubtingly. 
" All things mock me, and flit by. Yet this lifeless body must 
have been the form of her to whose voice of moonlight this fair 
grotto rose ; and I will give it fitting burial." 

He went out into a sj)acious hall, and by the power of his 
spell, magnificent columns rose, in the centre of which, under 
an arch richly festooned, stood a sarcophagus. Tenderly, and 
with a feeling of awe, he placed the body within it, and covered 
it with sand, that he might see its face no more. 

Then he wandered away to the innermost extremity of those 
charming grottoes, where he for a short time had enjoyed beauty 
and a sense of power. Now all was changed. He was alone, 
dissatisfied, and sad. "She told me truly," he said; "the 
loveliest of my creations are all petrifactions. There is nothing 
alive." For the first time, tears flowed from his eyes; and as 
he sighed for the vale of Ida, he murmured, "I have deserved 
my exile thence." 

A soothing influence was wafted through his soul, and he fell 
asleep. In his dreams Freia again appeared to him, glowing 
with celestial beauty. Smiling, she said to him, "Thou hast 



LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 357 

never enslaved me. The Aasgaardsreja pla3"ed with thy 
presumptuous pride. They gave to one of their own number 
the appearance of my form. It was the spirit of a Northern 
poetess, who traded with the divine gift of song, to flatter the 
vanity of wealthy jarls. Therefore was she condemned, as a 
punishment, to wander with the Aasgaardsreja, who placed her 
in thy power, to do thy bidding as she best could. Me thou 
couldst not bind for a moment. If thou coiddst fetter me with 
thy triangles and squares, the universe would stop its motions. 
Thou and I, dear Thot, are one from all eternity. Thou hast 
made this mournful separation, by reversing the divine laws of 
our being. Thou hast thought to create the outward, and then 
compel the inward to give it life. But the inward forms the 
outward, and thus only can the outward live. Seest thou not 
that all thy works are mere fragmentary accretions from things 
already created % All thy circles and measured intervals, took 
form from the tones of my harp ; but not by the triangles and 
the figures can the forgotten melodies be restored. I also know 
not whence they are. They came to me from the inmost shrine, 
and I transmit them, asking no questions. Thus let them flow 
into thee ; then spontaneously and silently, without efibrt or 
noise, all thy forms shall live. "When thou sincerely longed for 
the inward life, I came to thee from Mispelheim, and jDlayed 
rich harmonies ; which also were given to me, as I gave them 
to thee. Again, when thou wert gazing humbly upward, I 
played on the moonlight rays, warblings that revealed to thee 
far more than all thy circles and squares. All thy labour gives 
thee but broken and insii>"nificant fraijments of that wisdom 
which came to thee in perpetual revelation in thy glorious 
home." 

"But I am exiled thence," sighed Thot, "and how can I 
return 1 " 

"Renounce thy pride. Cease thy vain efforts to compel the 
inward by outward laws. Be simply willing to receive through 
me, as I receive through the All-pervading." 

" But I am imprisoned here. When shall the penance cease 1 " 
he asked. 

" If thou art humble, and willing to strive no more with thy 
outward laws, a long sleep will come over thee, and I shall 
be permitted to reveal many things to thee in dreams. At last, 
there will be born on earth a child strong enough to receive thy 
spirit, and delicate enough to be pervaded by mine. The echoes 



358 LETTERS FROM NEAV YORK. 

of my harp shall glide into his soul from all created forms. 
The grass shall whisper to him the primeval tone from which 
its being came ; the birds shall warble it ; the vines shall dance 
it to him; the flowers sigh it forth in fragrance; the cataract 
and the sea tell it to his secret ear, with their stormy voices ; 
the moonlight shall sing it with a mournful mystery ; and the 
stars breathe it with a solemn sound. He will suffer more than 
others ; for all discords will jar upon him, and the hard world 
will crush his sensitive heart, as keen winds cut the delicate 
blossom. But if he is true to his mission, there remains for him 
a glorious recompense." 

"And what shall this mission be'?" 

"To be strong in manhood, and yet remain a child in spirit. 
To let Nature breathe through his soul, as the wind through a 
tree. To believe all she tells him, and reveal it in immortal 
music." 

"And why must my return to Ida depend on his faithful 
performance of this mission?" 

Because through him we may become again united. Both 
thou and I must pervade his being. I will give him tone, and 
thou shalt give him power. But if thou shouldst tempt him 
with thy outward laws constraining the inward life, thou wilt 
give him petrified forms for creations, and thus destroy his 
mission." 

"When shall this child be bornf 

"When he comes into a mortal body, thou shalt be wakened 
with a gushing, gladsome sound, and see before thee a semi- 
circle of columns, with a pure transparent fountain in their 
centre. This shall be to thee a token of his birth." 

Not easily did the rebellious spirit learn humility and faith. 
Again, and again, the old temj^tation came over him, and he 
asked scornfully, " Wh}'- should I receive from her 1 She 
understands not the laws of her own beingf." 

" No," replied a gentle, tuneful voice; "but she obeys them." 
At last, the fierce discord became harmonised, and peaceful 
slumber stole over Thot. When he awoke the cavern was 
bright as day. A semi-circle of beautiful columns stood 
before him, and in the centre leaped up a pure transparent 
fountain. A voice from within the sparkling waters said, "To- 
day, a babe is born, where rock-sheltered Bergen looks out on 
the suro[ino- billows of the German Ocean. His soul must be 



i 



LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 359 

filled with thy struggling aspirations to reproduce all Nature, 
But he must receive all from Freia's harp, and not begin 
outward, as thou hast done. He must bring to the New World 
all those primeval tones, the utterance of which thou hast here 
so profoundly laboured to compel. But he must not himself 
seek to know the secrets he reveals. Nature will smile graciously 
on her trusting child, and fold him warmly to her heart. Then 
shalt thou and Freia be united in the halls of Gladheim." 

Cheerfully did the spirit arise in his renewed strength, of 
which humility was the inward name. A light went before 
him, and showed where subterranean genii had rolled away the 
rocks, and formed a new opening into the upper world. 

As the sunbeams greeted his dazzled eyes, the earth seemed 
covered with a veil of flowing gold, and for a moment he 
thought he had returned to the region of the immortals. But 
to the mountains of Norway he first must wend his way, no 
longer to dwell among the fogs of Niflheim. 

His subterranean w^orkshop still remains, with its mountains 
and its rivers, its waterfalls and stars, its church and tomb, its 
gushing fountain, and its marvellous grottoes of fairy frost- 
work. 

Stronp- and free grew the mountain child. Even in his 
cradle he felt the gliding presence of the tuneful one ; but when 
he smiled in his infant sleep, they knew not that he heard sweet 
tones from an invisible harp. As he grew older, the insects 
drummed and fifed to him; the star-points played to him with 
a twinkling sound; the golden grain waved to him in music; 
and from the dance of the vines he learned the melodious tune 
of theii' life. He believed all the moon and the stars told him ; 
and therefore they revealed much. In manhood he remained a 
child, and still laughed and wept when the birds mocked his 
warblings, because they heard in them the tuneful mystery of 
their being. Men fain would have fettered his free spirit, and 
given him creeds instead of tones. But above all their din 
sounded more and more clearly Freia's harp; and Tliot urged 
him ever to beware of petrifactions to receive the inward life 
unquestioning, and let it flow out into its own harmonious 
forms. 

The minstrel of the North performed his mission with ardent 
freedom and a brave simplicity ; and Thot and Freia are united 
forever in the golden groves of Ida. 



360 LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 

LETTER XXI. 

August 2, 1844. 

Various are the modes resorted to, to relieve tlie oppressiveness 
of summer in the city; but the pleasantest are steamboat 
excursions on the river, with glee clubs and bands of music. 
There have been a variety of these this season; but I think 
none of them have offered quite as many attractions as the trip 
in the South America, on the 30th of July. This vessel ranked 
as a queen among our steamboats, until the Knickerbocker and 
the Empire were built ; and though outdone in some respects 
by these magnificent rivals, she is a vessel of which any city 
might be proud, and well worthy of the noble river on which 
she moves. She goes through the water with prodigious power, 
and is fitted up with great elegance. The upper and lower 
cabins are spacious and airy; gay with a profusion of paintings 
and gilded ornaments. 

We had a band of instruments on board, and the ISTew York 
Sacred Choir, of one hundred and fifty singers. This attraction 
decoyed me. It imparted something of sacredness, even to a 
crowded steamboat. I never come into the presence of miisic, 
"without feeling inclined to uncover my head, and put on a 
garland, as the ancients did, when they entered the temples of 
their gods. This feeling does not arise merely from the delight 
of hearing sweet sounds. It is founded on the conviction that 
music represents the motions of the universe, and expresses the 
infinite mysteries of creation. The 7)i{ncl of man cannot per- 
ceive this; but his heart hears some of the mystic whisperings, 
and these, for the time, place him in harmonious relation with 
the All-Pervading One. 

We left the city at five in the afternoon. The breeze was 
fresh, the sky bright, and recent rains had rendered every 
thing clean and verdant. As we passed the beautiful shores 
of the North River, people waved their handkerchiefs from 
verandahs and summer-houses, and boys threw up their caps 
with loud hurras. One little fellow, who was bathing near the 
shore, began to dance in the water, to the music of our band. 
Seen among the distant shrubbery, he looked like Cupid frolic- 
ing with the water-nymphs. 

We went eighteen miles u p the river, and then returned, and 
wheeled round and round the city, in the evening twilight. 



LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 361 

The circular battlements of Castle Garden, brilliantly lighted, 
projected into the water like a crown of stars. Hundreds of 
boats, \vith lamps at the prow, were scattered about like fire- 
flies. A swarm of club-boats lay side by side, ready for a race 
the next day, bearing the graceful names of lanthe. Cygnet, 
Mist, Spray, Dream, &c. 

All at once the moon came above the horizon, larger and 
more golden than I ever saw it. It really seemed like the 
satellite of a nobler earth than ours. It was received with a 
full salute from our band; Apollo greeting his regal sister of 
the silver bow. Two or three minutes after the moon rose, a 
luminous circular cloud encompassed her, and gave her a strik- 
ing resemblance to Saturn with his ring. It brought vividly 
to my mind the beautiful transparencies used by Dr. Lardner, 
in his interesting lectures. I was much impressed by the 
appearance of Saturn wheeling across the glorious firmament of 
constellations. The lecturer had named all the other planets 
and comets, as they passed ; but Saturn sailed by unannounced. 
This wakened in me a proud and majestic feeling. To be the 
greatest of a clique, a clan, a sect, a party, or a nation, has ever 
seemed to me a pitiful ambition. The world itself is a small 
audience for the inspired soul. But to be so unique in the 
universe, as to need no announcement — I found something 
grand in this ! For a moment, I would have liked to be Saturn, 
thus to walk as a god among the planets. But the next 
moment our little Earth crossed the starry firmament, with its 
one own moon revolving round it so lovingly forever. My 
heart shouted, "There is our home! our own home!" and I 
would be Saturn no lonfjer. 

"With the moon, too, it was a brief fancy. She soon cast 
aside her luminous belt, and went up serenely resplendent over 
the waters. By Apollo's golden harp! it was magnificent to 
be rushing across the glittering mirror of the bay by moonlight, 
wdth music to give utterance to the yearnings of the heart! 
Then came haze and flitting clouds, under which our foam-wake, 
the ships and the shore wore tlie moon-veil so sleepily and 
dream-like! I could have lain thus for hours on the bosom 
•of drowsy Nature, while every pulse kept time to her lullaby. 

But Staten Island was our final destination, wdiere a pic-nic 
for our party of seven hundred awaited us in a lamp-lighted 
grove. Thither we marched in procession, preceded by the 
music of the band. A concourse of people belonging to the 



362 LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 

island assembled round our tables, and we ate like kings and 
queens, for the entertainment of the public. When the hour 
arrived for returning to the boat, the choir of singers gave us 
^'Auld lang syne" in full chorus; and strangers as we were to 
each other, every one found a response in the memory of his 
heart. 

During the whole of the excursion, I was particularly pleased 
with the good nature that prevailed. Everybody seemed 
happy, and desirous to help his neighbour to be so. But there 
was no vulgarity, no rude noises, no deficiency of politeness. 
Perhaps something might be attributed to the genial influence 
of the scene; but in the crowds of New York I have always 
been struck with the general disposition to be good-natured 
and obliging. Such a rush of strangers have no opportunity to 
settle conventional claims, and they are compelled to fall back 
on the common brotherhood of the race. For his own sake, no 
man refuses the courtesy of which he every hour feels the 
need. 

Choruses, glees, and songs, with occasional interludes of the 
band, cheered our return, and we came up to the city to the 
tune of "Home, sweet home." The air, so like a mother's voice, 
was, as usual, an especial favourite. It shared the general 
favour with the " Old Granite State," and two or three others, 
endeared to the heart by those delightful mountain minstrels, 
the Hutchinsons. Midnight saw us safely returned to our 
hundred homes, the better, I trust, for having been bound 
together for a few hours in the golden circle of music and moon- 
light. 

In the afternoon, we passed a steamboat full of Sunday- 
school children, with flags flying and the pleasant sound of 
youthful voices. We gave them three cheers as they passed, 
and they waved their handkerchiefs. The public schools and 
benevolent institutions of the city are often treated to excursions 
of this kind. I rejoice at this, and all other indications that 
society begins to perceive her children need something more 
than food and raiment. 

This reminds me of a visit I made the other day to The 
Sailor's Home, in Cherry Street. It is the largest and best 
arranged institution of the kind in the country. Indeed, it 
was the only one in the world built expressly for the purpose, 
except the Sailor's Home in London. The benevolent have 
made limited arrangements for the comfort and improvement of 



LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 363 

seamen in several of our cities ; but New York has a large and 
commodious edifice erected especially for tlieir accommodation. 
It is six stories high, not including the basement, and has 
ample arrangements for three hundred boarders. The rooms 
are pleasant, and well ventilated, and Croton Water is intro- 
duced on every floor, with all conveniences for bathing. There 
is a museum, a reading-room well supplied with books and 
papers, and a bowling alley. Some of the stricter sort objected 
to this last, as likely to prove injurious, though no gambling is 
allowed. They were mistaken. Recreation is necessary to all 
men; and peculiarly so in the leisure hours of those accustomed 
to an active life. If they could have a picture gallery, and a 
band of music every evening, it would be so much the better. 
Every instinct of man is good in its place. Not one was given 
to be repressed or annihilated. Healthy and appropriate 
channels for free development is all that is required to bring 
every thing into harmony. 

Captain Richardson, the Superintendent, is a conscientious, 
kind-hearted man. He was a sea-captain many years, and 
knows the way to sailors' hearts. His ships were formerly as 
remarkable for temperance and good order, as his sailor's home 
now is. In fact, he acts the part of a father to the seamen who 
come under his care. He assists them in procuring voyages, 
investing money, &c; and, avoiding rules and restraints as 
much as possible, he endeavours to make virtue and sobriety 
cheerful and attractive. The door is left unfastened during the 
night, guarded by sentinels, who w^atch alternately. "The 
sailors know we like to have them in by ten o'clock,^' said he ; 
" but they may have occasion to stay out later, and yet be sober 
and worthy men. If they are not sober and worthy, so much the 
more need that we should not bolt them out." There is a 
whole volume of Christian wisdom in that remark. Yet how 
slowly does society learn that " an ounce of prevention is worth 
a pound of cure." 

Shipwrecked sailors have a right to a home gratis at this 
institution ; and they make pretty free use of the claim. But 
true to their generous natures, those who return to this port 
are usually very honourable about settling arrears. A short 
time ago, a sailor jH-esented himself, and said, '■'■ Captain, do 
you remember me"?" "No, my friend, I do not." "Well, I 
don't wonder you have forgotten me. I came here a long time 
ago. I had been wrecked. You gave me my board, and got 



364 LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 

a voyage for me. You told me to take my advance wages for 
the clothes I needed. I owe you seventeen dollars, and I have 
got just the money. Here it is, and thank you, too. And now 
I want to get a short voyage, to earn a little money to go and 
see my old mother at Baltimore." After some inquiiy into the 
merits of the case, Captain Richardson enabled the honest fellow 
to go home to his mother. 

Considering the great value of this institution, the merchants 
of New York have been less libex'al towards it than I should 
have supposed they would have been. They subscribed but 
$13,000. The establishment is now in debt $17,000, beside 
$10,000 to the State, for land. The State will probably give 
them this debt, though there is opposition from those whose 
interests are injured by temperance houses. The State would 
doubtless more than save it, in the prevention of crime. It is 
impossible to calculate the benefits, direct and indirect, of 
having six thousand sailors a year brought under the healthy 
influence of such an institution. Among the five hundred who 
meet there every month, there are many attracted by the 
character of the house, who decidedly prefer sobriety and 
modesty, and who take delight in reading, praying, and singing 
hymns. These place no restraint on the movements of others 
less seriously inclined; but, a healthy influence goes forth 
invisibly from their example. New York is not a Sodom, after 
all. 

' ' 0, thoii resort and mart of all the earth, 
Chequered with all complexions of mankind, 
And spotted with all crimes ; in whom I see 
jNIuch that I love, and more that I admire, 
And all that I abhor ; thou freckled fair, 
That pleases and yet shock'st me, I can laugh, 
And I can weep, can hope, and can despond, 
Feel wrath and i)ity, when I think on thee ! 
Ten righteous would have saved a city once, 
And thou hast many righteous. " 

All over the world the same spirit is wakening. A friend 
who resides at Eennes, in France, writes to me, " We have 
lately established an institution here to supply the law and 
medical students with amusement, without injury to morals. 
It is a spacious edifice, well warmed and lighted, with libraries 
adapted to various departments of study and literature ; a large 
shady garden, with alcoves for solitude ; a billiard and play- 
room, where betting and curds are prohibited ; and a music- 



LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 365 

room, where there is a concert once a week. Two dollars 
annually secures to a young man all the privileges of the place. 
It is encouraging to see how many we win from the coffee- 
houses and lounging shops. Many do all their studying there, 
and find in it a great economy of fire and light." 

What a blessing would such an institute be to the clerks, 
journeymen mechanics, and the thousand other young men in 
our cities, who have no pleasant homes to go to! A prison 
costs more to the State. 

Enlightened self-interest might teach us, if it were not for 
the fact that self-interest never can be enlightened. The 
highest and most cultivated individual in the community would 
derive direct advantage from a general elevation of character 
and pursuits among all the people. The largest lesson of 
wisdom I ever heard on this subject, was briefly uttered by a 
hard-working mechanic of Massachusetts. He subscribed one 
thousand dollars toward the establishment of a Normal School, 
to educate teachers for common public schools throughout the 
State. A friend, who knew he had but a small portion of this 
world's wealth, returned the paper to him, saying, " I suppose 
you mean one hundred dollars, and have written a cipher too 
much." 

" Why should you suppose that ? " replied he. •' I am a 
father ; and in what way can I so effectually advance the 
interests of my children, as by educating the community in 
which they are to live ? " 

Society is like a child that first creeps, and then walks by 
chairs, and at last tries its own legs, astonished to find that 
they will do to stand on. Our sailors' home, our normal 
schools, our benevolent institutions with pleasant gardens, our 
pictured steamboats, our bands of music for all the j^eople — ail 
these things are feelers put out, slowly teaching the world that 
every son of Adam has a right to the free develojDment of all 
his faculties, and the healthy enjoyment of all his tastes. 



LETTER XXII. 

August 17, 1844. 

You say you have the most intense longing to form some 
distinct idea of the present existence of the dear babe you have 



366 LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 

lost ; and therefore urge me to explain what are Swedenborg's 
teachings concerning the future life ; particularly the state of 
those who die in infancy. The information, even if it has any 
weight with you, will not soothe the grief of mere natural 
affection, or satisfy any selfish craving of the heart. But if all 
thoughts of self are merged in the wish for your child's spiritual 
welfare, a belief in Swedenborg's testimony would make you 
happy. He does not say that we shall be united in the other 
world, on account either of natural relationship, or natural 
affection, however strong these may have been on earth. 
Spiritual consanguinity, or similar states of the 8oul, alone 
can produce companionship there. Strangers, who never saw 
each other in the body, may be very near together as spirits; 
while natural brothers and sisters, or legal husbands and wives, 
may be very far apart. 

Time and space are spiritually mere states of mind. We 
may partly understand this from facts in the present life, if we 
reflect that an hour seems a minute to a man about to be exe- 
cuted, while a minute seems an hour to the friend who is 
hurrying to him with the pardon, that he fears may come too 
late. With regard to space, likewise, we all know what it is 
to feel very distant from a person that sits next to us, and very 
near to a person a thousand miles off. In the spiritual world, 
there are no obstacles of material space and time to overcome ; 
and therefore, according to Swedenborg, two persons whoso 
afiections are in a similar state, are near together the moment 
they think of each other. Thus it comes that our spiritual 
similarity, not our earthly love, produces vicinity. But if our 
friendship in this world lias not been merely for the selfish and 
temporary purpose of convenience, vanity, or passion; if we have 
loved in each other what was good and true, and tried to help 
each other to be unselfish and pure, then are we spiritually re- 
lated, and the relation will pass into eternity. 

We are told that infants who die, enter the other world as 
infants. As they had here only the rudiments of capacity to 
become men, so they have there the rudiments of capacity to 
become angels. But their state is much better than that of 
little children in this life ; for not being encumbered with a ma- 
terial body, which must receive impressions from the external 
world, and slowly learn to use its senses by experience, they 
can act at once from their souls, and thus walk and speak with- 
out practice. They do not suffer from hereditary evils, because 



LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 367 

these are not their own. Had they lived on earth to a mature 
age, these inherited evils would have tempted them severely, 
and they might have made them their own, by bringing them 
into the deeds of their actual life. But having departed in in- 
fancy, they are in a state of innocence, into which heavenly 
good and truth flows freely, without resistance. They are 
troubled with no mournful recollections ; for they suppose they 
w^ere born in heaven. As soon as their souls leave the body, 
they are folded in the arms of angels, who while they lived in 
this world were women full of maternal tenderness. Each an- 
gel has charge of as many children as she desires from spiritual 
parental love. The speech of the little ones at first consists of 
mere flowing tones of afl'ection ; but these gradually become 
more articulate and distinct, as ideas of thought enter. All 
things are taught them by delightful images, suited to their 
tender state. They learn fast, because no false princi^^les, ac- 
quired during their earthly existence, obstruct their under- 
standing of truth, and no evils of life resist the reception of 
good. Swedenborg assures us that he has frequently seen them 
in beautiful gardens with their angelic teachers. Oftentimes, 
they had garlands on their arms and breasts, resplendent with 
the most heavenly colours. Porticoes conducted to interior 
paths of these gardens, and when the children passed through, 
the flowers above the entrance, shone with a celestial glow. 
From the merely external innocence of ignorance, they are 
gradually led by the angels to internal innocence, which is the 
highest wisdom. 

The other life is not represented as one of rest, but of pro- 
gressive development by active usefulness. Some are engaged 
in educating those who pass from this world in childhood. 
Others are ministering spirits to us mortals ; forever trying to 
guard us against evil, to strengthen our good resolutions, to 
suggest images of beauty, and the truths of science. Authors 
and artists of genius, I believe, universally share the experience 
of Bettina, who says, ''There were thoughts shajied within me. 
I did not perpend them, I believed in them. They had this 
peculiarity, as they have still, that I felt them not as self- 
thought, but as imparted." Still more distinct is the occasional 
consciousness of invisible help to souls struggling with many 
temptations, through the rugged paths of regeneration. 

Evil spirits perform the same oflice that they did while they 
were wicked men on earth — only, with augmented power. 



368 LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 

They try to pollute the imagination of others with impure 
thoughts, to excite vindictive passions, to make truth appear 
falsehood, and selfishness the only good. If a man yields to 
their influence, and brings into deeds the thoughts and feelings 
they tempt him with, their power in the next temptation is 
redoubled ; and if he goes on thus, they gain at last an almost 
irresistible mastery over him. Nothing is more common in 
the confession of criminals, than the remark, " It seemed as if 
the devil pushed me on to do it. I did not seem to be myself." 

But if, on the contrary, we resist the temptation, and do not 
bring the evil feeling, or the false thought, into life, we grow 
stronger with every efibrt ; as the Sandwich-islanders believe 
that the strength of every conquered enemy passes into the 
conqueror. The simple act of resisting temptation turns our 
souls away from those spirits whose bad feelings are similar to 
something in oui'selves; and in the same degree we are brought 
nearer to the influence of those angels whose affections are op- 
posite to the evil with which we were tempted. Thus the free 
agency of man is preserved j for spirits have over us just the 
degree of power which we give them, and no more. Angels 
are always desirous to restrain man from evil, to guard and 
bless him ; but their ability to approach him depends on spirit- 
ual laws, as unchangeable as the laws of natural science. 

The angels in their relation to each other, to spirits, and to 
mortals, are but mediums of the divine love and wisdom of 
God, flowing through them into the hearts and minds of men, 
and transmitted and received according to established laws. 
This intervention of mediums, this gradation of causes and 
efiects, pervades all creation. 

Swedenborg asserts that no man at his death enters at once 
into heaven or hell, but remains for a time in the intermediate 
world of spirits. There, it is the continual effort of angels to 
draw them out of the evils and falsities they have acquired on 
earth. These errors and evils, which are merely the results of 
education, are easily separated from the soul ; but those which 
men have deliberately adopted into their own lives, in the free 
consciousness of their wills, are parted with by great struggles. 
If interior goodness and truth predominate over the evil and 
the false, the spirit is gradually regenerated by the influence of 
those angels who can approach it, because they are in affinity 
with its characteristic goods or truths. But if interior evil and 
falsehood predominate, the soul comes under the influence of 



LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 3G9 

spirits grounded in the same evils and falsities, and becomes 
worse and worse, with a constantly accelerating speed. The 
same law is manifested in the effect produced by wicked associ- 
ates in this world. But the tender care of Divine Providence 
still strives to protect the sinner; for in this process of degen- 
eration, he gradually loses the perception of the good and the 
true, and thus cannot sin so deeply as he would, if he clearly 
saw what he resisted. 

Swedenborg represents the joys of heaven as consisting in 
the subordination of self-love to the love of others. This, by 
progressive degrees, becomes so perfect, that the highest angels 
love their neighbours better than themselves, and each is active 
in ministering delights to all. Of course, where every one 
brings his services as a free and beautiful gift, no one can liave 
any deficiency of service from others, so perfect is the mutuality 
of love, and the orderly gradation of various gifts. 

The torments of hell are said to consist in precisely the op- 
posite state of things. There, the prevailing disposition is to 
com[)el others to serve ourselves. The effects are, of course, a 
mutual desire to deceive, provoke, annoy, and injure each other. 
This infernal reign of the evil passions, with the attendant re- 
sults, are represented as constituting the whole misery of the 
wicked. The sun of God's love shines as freely on them as on 
the angels in heaven ; but by spiritual laws, as unalterable as 
the laws of chemistry, they cannot receive the pure influence ; 
the state of their own will perverts it as it enters. 

Swedenborg's doctrine of correspondence explains many other 
things in relation to the condition of souls hereafter. This 
doctrine is not, as many suppose, founded on mere fancied re- 
semblances. He lays it down as a science ; the innermost per- 
vading soul of all sciences. He d(K'lares that everything in the 
universe is but the form of some variation of thoujjht or affec- 
tion ; and if the thought or affection ceased, the form could not 
possibly exist. In other words, ideas and feelings are the 
souls, of which animals, vegetables and minerals, are the bodies. 
These feelings and ideas are in their elements few and simple ; 
but as musical sounds produce infinitely varying harmonies by 
their ever-changing relations and combinations, so from these 
sentiments and ideas are evolved all the manifold forms of 
beauty and order in creation. But this doctrine of correspon- 
dence is not based on any imaginary resemblance, or natural 
analogy. It is founded on the fact that the sj^iritual idea is 

2 a 



370 LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 

tlie producing cause, or soul, of the natural form. Thus the 
progressions of time are produced by the imperfections of hu- 
man intellect, all the thoughts of which are successive, and all 
its knowledge acquired by degrees. Because, at this period of 
the world, elevated sentiments more than ever give tone to 
man's intellectual perceptions, therefore music advances more 
and more toward perfection, though the other arts remain sta- 
tionary. For good and pure affections are the producing cause 
of melodious sounds, and the embodiment of these affections in 
truths, bearing a right relation to each other, is the spiritual 
cause of harmony. 

Thus the large sentiment of human brotherhood takes mani- 
fested form in various truths. In one form, it seeks to break 
the fetters of the slave; in another, to throw down the walls 
of sect; in another, to abolish national antipathies. The holy 
sentiment of forgiveness of enemies takes to itself form in 
doctrines opposed to capital punishment, and in favour of 
increased kindness toward prisoners. The pure sentiment of 
real marriage manifests itself in theories, which acknowledge 
Avoman as the equal, the friend, the partner of man in all 
his pursuits. Each of these is a melody from the central 
heart of love ; and because the various modil&cations of utter- 
ance are coming more and more into accord with each other, 
therefore the science of harmony improves. Chivalry was the 
first vague manifestation of the feeling that woman ought to be 
raised from the low level where sensuality had placed her. It 
is an observable fact, that in about the same age of the world, 
appeared the first crude indications of harmony in music ; and 
when chivalry was at its height, harmony had taken a distinct 
though very imperfect form, as a science. But it was hidden 
from the perceptions of man that one caused the other. 

In this world men may surround themselves with material 
objects very opposite to their inward state. A bad man may 
make very delightful music, and a harlot may deck herself with 
lilies of the valley. But it is otherwise in the spiritual world. 
There a man is in the midst of those forms of which his own 
thoughts and feelings are the producing cause. Hence, angels 
are surrounded by forms and colours beautiful according to 
their state ; and their speech, being in correspondence with 
their affections, is not only like music to the ear, but is very 
delightful to the interiors of the heart. Swedenborg says he 
once heard an angel speaking to a hard-hearted spirit ; and he 



LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 371 

of the hard heart was so affected by the tones, that he wept. 
He said he had never wept before, but he coidd not help it now, 
because it was pure love speaking. 

Evil spirits, on the contrary, are surrounded by deformed 
shapes, seen in a lurid light, and their voices are harsh and dis- 
cordant, in proportion to their degrees of evil. 

I have thus endeavoured to give you, as clearly and concisely 
as possible, an outline of what I understand to be Swedenborg's 
statements with regard to the condition of the soul hereafter. 
In answer to your question how he knew the things which he 
declares, I leave him to answer in his own words. He says, 
" The things which are in the heavens cannot be seen by the 
eyes of man's body, but only by the eyes of his spirit. When 
it pleases the Lord, these interior eyes are opened, while man 
is withdrawn from the natural light, in which he is from the 
senses of the body, and is elevated into spiritual light, in which 
he is from his spirit. In that light, the things which are in 
the heavens have been seen by me. It has been given me 
thus to pass through the dwellings of the angels in full wake- 
fulness, when my interior sight was opened." 

I will here mention, merely as a curious psychological fact, 
that several people in magnetic sleep, though entirely unac- 
quainted with the writings of Swedenborg, have described the 
spiritual world in a manner strikingly similar to his. A friend 
told me of a person in a clairvoyant state, who was asked where 
she was ; she answered, " I am in the world of spirits." When 
asked how it looked there, she replied, " It is very beautiful. 
The light is brighter than our sunshine, and makes objects 
more distinct ; but it is so soft and golden, that it does not 
dazzle the eyes." My friend asked her to inquire for Elizabeth 

, a very lovely girl, who had died some months before. 

During her pilgrimage on earth she had been extremely attached 
to children, and had been devoted to their education from a 
sincere love of the occupation. The countenance of the clair- 
voyant mantled with an expression of delight, as she answered, 
" Oh ! Elizabeth is more beautiful than ever. She is surround- 
ed by happy little children, who run to her with flowers they 
gather, and she is weaving them into garlands." 

When asked to find Mr. , who had been sometime de- 
ceased, she said she could not. Being urged to seek him, a cloud 
went over her face, and she answered, with a slight shudder, 
" I don't want to go there. It is dark and cold." 



372 LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 

With regard to Swedenborg's claim to the resj^ect and confi- 
dence of his readers, I will briefly state a few facts, and leave 
you to form your own conclusions in freedom. The unanimous 
testimony is, that he was a man of very virtuous life, and sim- 
ple manners. His knowledge of the sciences was remarkably 
extensive, profound, and accurate. He published treatises 
on the Animal Kingdom, the Vegetable Kingdom and the 
Mineral Kingdom ; on the Tides, Coins, the construction of 
Vessels, on Chemistry, Geometry, (fee, tfec. The most elabor- 
ate of these scientific works is entitled Opera Philosophica et 
Mineralia. It ranks very high, for the variety and depth of 
learning it displays. The theory of the circulation of the blood 
was first indicated by him ; and he stated that seven planets 
were created from the sun of our solar system, in a work long 
before Herschel discovered the seventh planet. His mechanical 
skill was manifested in various ways ; among others, by the 
invention of an easy and simple method of transporting the 
largest galleys over the mountains and rocks of Norway, to a 
gulf where the Danish fleet was stationed. The best memorial 
on Finance was presented by him to the Swedish Diet of 1751. 
His scientific knowledge and mechanical skill were rewarded 
with many honours, at home and abroad. He was offered the 
professorship of Mathematics in the University of XJpsala, which 
he declined. The king appointed him Assessor of the Mines, and 
conferred on him the title of Baron, by virtue of which he took 
liis seat with nobles, in the Triennial Assemblies of the realm. 

I mention these facts, merely to show that Swedenborg was 
a man of learning, and of practical good sense. His remarks 
on the animal kingdom, and the structure of the human frame, 
show that he thought deeply and earnestly concerning the mys- 
terious connection between body and soul. In 1743, at the 
age of fifty-four, he relinquished scientific pursuits, and devoted 
himself entirely to writing those numerous theological works, 
which contain the doctrines of the present New Jerusalem 
Church. He repeatedly disclaims the intention, or wish, to be 
considered the founder of a sect. He constantly declares that 
the doctrines are not a product of his own intellect, but impart- 
ed to him by express revelation, in a state of divine illumina- 
tion. So strong and sincere is this belief, that he habitually 
proves one part of his writings by another ; repeatedly sayings 
with the most child-like naivete, "That this is true, is proved 
by what I have written in another volume." 



LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 373 

In these remarkable works, lie speaks continually of visits to 
the spiritual world, and of familiar conversations with men 
long since dead. That he had likewise the clairvoyant faculty 
of seeing objects in distant places on this earth, is well attested 
by abundant and unimpeachable evidence. Thus he told dis- 
tinctly the beginning and progress of a fire in Stockholm, and 
described all the details with the accuracy of an eye-witness, at 
the precise time the fire occurred ; though he was in Gotten- 
burg, which is three hundred English miles from Stockholm. 
Instances similar to this became perfectly familiar to his friends 
and acquaintance, and were spoken of by himself with the 
utmost simplicity, as matters of every-day occurrence. 

Under these circumstances, it is no marvel that he came to 
be generally regarded as insane ; though his manners always 
remained simple and serene, and his scientific conversations 
profound and rational. For a time his theological writings 
were universally considered as the mere absurd ravings and 
grotesque visions of a crazy man. Being very voluminous, and 
written in Latin, they were sealed from the public. The few 
who looked into them were usually wearied by the hard dry 
style, or disgusted with what seemed to them improbable or 
ridiculous fictions. But by degrees, a discerning few began to 
say, " There is method in this madness. These theories are 
not the product of an insane brain ; for the parts have harmon- 
ious relation to each other, and form a perfect whole." This 
class of readers increased, until these very peculiar writings 
spread into various languages, found a place in the libraries of 
scholars, mixed with theological studies in colleges, modified 
the preaching of various sects, and became more or less infused 
into literature. He who had been contemptuously styled the 
crazy prophet, at last came to be most respectfully mentioned 
in public lectures, as a man remarkable for scientific learning 
and depth of spiritual insight. He was ranked with Kant and 
Goethe, as one of the three minds that would permanently 
afi*ect tlie coming ages. 

Philosophers afiirm that man's eternal progression made it 
impossible that any dispensation of truth could preclude the 
necessity of further developments. They averred that Sweden- 
borg did not utter himself like a prophet ; that the stamp of 
his own scientific knowledge was on all his revelations ; that 
his views on some subjects were modified by preconceived opin- 
ions, and the prejudices of education. What he saw and heard 



374 LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 

in the spiritual world, they declared to be a reflex of his own 
state of mind ; hence most of the spirits he met, were talking 
about the trinity, justification by faith alone, and similar sub- 
jects intensely interesting to his own mind. No one expressed 
a doubt that he himself verily believed that he saw and 
heard all he describes. The simplicity and innocence of 
the man seem to be so far respected by all who approach 
his writings. 

There is a class of thinkers who are not his disciples, but 
who believe that his childlike reverential spirit, combined with 
such remarkably various learning, and the singular power of 
abstracting his soul from the senses, fitted him in a very pecu- 
liar manner, to be the transparent medium of profound spiritual 
truths. They do not accept all he says as true ; nor do they 
accept any of it as truth simply because he says it. They 
think all finite mediums of infinite wisdom must necessarily be 
imperfect. Dr. Johnson says, "Milton himself could not teach 
a boy more than he could learn ; " and they argue that the 
angels must have been governed by the same law of limitation 
in their revelations to Swedenborg. To prove that his percep- 
tions of truth were modified and sometimes obscured by his own 
states of mind, they quote one of his own memorable relations. 
He says that once, when he was walking in the world of spirits, 
he saw some angels under a tree, eating figs. He said to them, 
" Give me of your figs." They did so ; but in his hand the}' 
became grapes. "How is tins'?" inquired he: "Did I not 
ask you for figs'?" They replied, " "VVe gave you figs, but you 
took grapes." 

We have all of us experienced something similar to this, 
when we have tried to talk on spiritual subjects, with minds 
differently constituted from our own. We often give figs to 
others, and see plainly enough that they can take only grapes. 

How Swedenborg saw what candid readers believe he was 
perfectly honest in relating, is a qu.estion that puzzles many. 
Some suppose that by intense abstraction of spirit, while exa- 
mining into the causes of things, he unconsciously acquired a 
self-magnetising power, by which he was placed in a state of 
clairvoyant perception, similar to that sometimes produced by 
magnetic sleep. In corroboration of this, they quote the ru- 
mour that when his domestics entered his library, they some- 
times found him in deep reverie, with a strange expression in 
his eyes, as if the soul were absent from the body. 



LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 375 

\Yliatever may be the solution of the mystery, Swedenborg 
is unquestionably the most remarkable phenomenon of the 
age. 



LETTER XXIII. 

September 26, 1844. 

The year, now entered on its middle age, wears a robe as gorge- 
ous here in the city, as do the autumn woods of Maine, when 
the frost touches them in all their vigour, and suddenly clothes 
them with its glowing mantle of purple, yellow, and crimson. 
In simpler words, the ribbons, silks and cashmeres, are unusually 
brilliant and varied in their colours, this season. The ladies 
look like walking rainbows, and the shop-windows of Broadway 
are as gay and warmly tinted as the wardrobe of an Eastern 
princess. Wealth was never more lavish in expenditure, and 
poverty never more tattered and shrinking. Acres of flags are 
waving across the streets, with inscriptions for Clay or Polk. 
Processions perambulate the city, from one extremity to the 
other. Orations are vociferated, by the light of bonfires, from 
temporary rostrums in the squares, and Whigs and Democrats 
both disperse to the tune of " Hail to the chief, who in triumph 
advances." 

Under this glittering and tumultuous tide, there runs ever a 
stiller and a deeper current. The artist, with quiet earnestness, 
is writing inward beauty on the outward, and thus unconsciously 
doing Jiis part toward bringing the poles of the earth into 
harmony with the poles of heaven. The philanthropist, with 
l)atient love, is labouring in obscure places, to restore defaced 
humanity. The reformer, with strong hope, is striving to 
clothe the social state with stainless wedding garments, for its 
marriage with a purer church. Blessings on them all ! All, 
in their appointed way, are mediators between the divine and 
human, and all are helping to fulfil the glorious prophecy of 
final at-one-ment between God and man. 

From the din of partisan strife, and the never-resting scram- 
ble of Mammon, I seek repose and refreshment in the lap of 
nature ; or if this be not convenient, I walk to 322 Broadway, 
and lounsje an hour or two in the rooms of The Arts Union. 
Seated before Durand's exceedingly beautiful picture of the 
Passing Summer Shower, the landscape of life soon becomes 



376 LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 

touched with golden rays of hope, amid the sombre masses, and 
I cannot long remain without rainbow gleams within my soul. 

Many of these drawings and pictures are the workmanship 
of men engaged in banks, stores, and other departments of 
active life. These can easily become artists by profession, if 
they find in themselves enough of acknowledged talent to 
warrant the hazardous experiment ; if not, this tasteful employ- 
ment of their leisure hours is an innocent and healthful recrea- 
tion, well adapted to keep them from the maddening whirlpool 
of politics and dissipation. 

A good deal of mediocrity exhibits itself in these rooms ; but 
it is always relieved by many agreeable objects, and some really 
beautiful, wherewith to refresh the eye and the heart. Perhaps 
a marine sketch by Bonfield, with seas so translucent, that the 
colour of the sailors' jackets is seen through them, in waving 
reflections ; and so full of billowy life, that the gazer almost 
feels the waves bound beneath him, "like a steed that knows 
his rider." Or some landscapes, with foliage so light, that the 
breezes seem to play with it; and an atmosphere so clear, that 
the far-ofl" distance is transparent. The artist is a young 
beginner, the son of a farmer on Staten Island ; but a glance at 
one of his pictures is sufficient to show that Nature sung over 
his cradle. He paints genuine American landscapes ; scenes 
that have mirrored themselves in his own eye and heart. May 
he trust to his own genius, and not lose himself, by trying to 
imitate the characteristic excellence of others. 

At these rooms, I saw the most beautiful picture I have seen 
for a long time. It is Columbus pleading his own cause before 
Ferdinand and Isabella. The scene is one of the fairy hall 
of the Alhambra. Its walls highly decorated with brilliant 
tints of the Arabian pencil, and its airy, fanciful, jewelled 
architecture, so expressive of a chivalrous, poetic and volup- 
tuous people, are in admirable keeping with the glow^ing colours 
of the drapery; and all is tempered by a soft pervading 
light. The whole atmosphere of the place speaks of love, and 
song, and balmy zephyrs, of orange groves and alabaster 
fountains. The rich colours are mingled like cloud-tints of an 
autumn sunset, and so harmonised, that the effect is pleasing 
as a strain of music. 

The expression of character is as admirable as the colouring. 
There is great variety in the faces, and a marked individuality 
in each ; but all are true to nature and alive with soul. 



LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 377 

In the noble figure of Columbus, one sees liis natural 
enthusiasm tempered by age and sorrow, but still intense and 
eloquent. The head of Cardinal Ximenes is admirably ex- 
pressive of the powerful intellect and strong will, for which he 
was remarkable. 

The attitudes, the grouping, and the drapery, are exquisitely 
free and graceful. This fine picture was painted by a young 
artist of German parentage, a native of Philadelphia, now study- 
ing his art in Dresden. He had previously painted The Landing 
of Columbus in chains at Cadiz, which attracted a good deal of 
attention in Europe. He might have sold it well there, but he 
preferred that a picture, the subject of which was so interesting 
to Americans, should be owned by one of his countrymen. He 
accordingly sent it home, expressly for the Art Union, with 
the expectation that they would make it the subject of one of 
their annual engravings for distribution. It is now being 
engraved by an artist of great merit. The Art Union have 
agreed to pay him $3000 for the plate. 

The genius of our government is adverse to such munificent 
encouragement of art, as was bestowed in the olden time. We 
shall never have, I trust, such patrons as Charles V., or the 
House of Medici; but we can foster art in a style better suited 
to the freedom and equality of republican institutions. 

One of the leading objects of the Art Union is to scatter 
abroad works of native art among the masses of people, who 
are not able to pay such high prices as the rich can afi'ord. To 
say nothing of the pleasure thus given, it is not easy to calculate 
the refining influence, that may thus be brought to bear on a 
nation too exclusively devoted to the practical, and far too eager 
in pursuit of gain. It is wise to guard against the grovelling 
tendencies of such pursuits, by the earnest cultivation of music, 
painting and sculpture. While we welcome all foreign excel- 
lence, let us give these plants, of divine origin, a genial soil 
and a balmy atmosphere in our own favoured land. 

The practical oi)eration of this institution is to encourage the 
first aspirations of genius, to enable talent to find its own level, 
without the certainty of starvation in the process. Some object 
to subscribe to it, on the ground that the annual distribution 
of prizes is too much like a lottery. But I think tliis is founded 
on misapprehension. It does not resemble a lottery, because it 
is not a plan to enrich a few at the expense of many. It is a 
combination of small means to encourage art. It is by the 



378 LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 

people, and for the people; strictly democratic in its plan, and 
in its modes of operation. It is not like a lottery ; for though 
the prizes are few, tliere are no blanks. Every subscriber is 
sure to receive an engraving, if he is not lucky enough to draw 
a picture or a statue. By this process, a public taste is being 
gradually formed, which will increase the demand for works of 
art, and stimulate genius to higher efforts; for even the true 
artist is excited and helped by the sympathy and appreciation 
of his fellow-beings. 

The Art Union of New York is the first of the kind in the 
United States. They were first established in Dresden and 
Dusseldorf. The London Society has been most successful. 
It does not distribute pictures, but money, which must be 
expended in the purchase of original British paintings. In 
this way, it distributed last year more than $60,000 among 
their native artists. 

In a country, where so many causes combine to infect 
everything with the spirit of trade, we peculiarly need the 
quieting and refining influence of the arts. If we would avoid 
becoming a nation of ofiice-hunters, stock-jobbers, and pedlars, 
we ought to encourage all efibrts to excite genius, and improve 
the popular taste. 

Sculjjture especially seems to favour republics. The earnest 
expression and classic grace of Crawford's Orpheus, would have 
done credit to the best days of Greece. No artist in the old 
world competes with Powers, I believe. But there is one in 
New York, as yet comparatively unknown, and contending 
with adverse circumstances, who I think will as fairly claim 
the laurel crown. In Horace Kneeland's bust of Ericsson, 
the character and expression of the celebrated mechanician are 
remarkably well-preserved; the lips are singularly flexible, and 
the minute delineation of swell ins^ veins and muscular indenta- 
tions, give it that look of genuine flesh, for which the busts of 
Powers are so rema;rkable. 



LETTER XXIV. 

September 17, 1844. 

I REVISITED Greenwood Cemetery, a few days ago, and found 
many new monuments ; one of which particularly interested 



LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 379 

me, from the cheerful simplicity of its epitaph. The body of a 
mother and child rested beneath the marble, and on it was 
inscribed the words: "Is it well with thee*? Is it well with 
the child'? And she answered. It is well." 2 Kings iv. 26. 
This gives pleasant indication of real fViith in immortality; like 
the Moravians, who never inscribe on their tombs the day 
when a man was born and when he died, but simply "the day 
he came hither, and the day he loent home" Why Christians 
should have chosen a skull and cross-bones for their emblem of 
death seems incomjDrehensible. The Greeks, notwithstanding 
their shadowy faith in a future existence, represented death as 
a gentle and beautiful youth; sometimes as a sleeping winged 
child, with an inverted torch resting on a wreath of flowers. 
Even Samael, the awful death angel of the Hebrews, resem- 
bling our popular ideas of the devil, was always said to take 
away the souls of the young by a kiss. 

If we really believed that those who are gone from us were 
as truly alive as ourselves, we could not invest the subject 
with such awful gloom as we do. If we would imbue our 
children with distinct faith in immortality, we should never 
speak of people as dead, but as passed into another world. 
We should speak of the body as a cast-off garment, which the 
wearer had outgrown ; consecrated indeed by the beloved being 
that used it for a season, but of no value within itself. 

A pretty, foreign-looking little chapel, now stands at the 
entrance of Greenwood, containing a bell, to be tolled when 
the funeral trains pass in. I felt compassion for it, because 
all its life long it was obliged to utter sad tones. With the 
melancholy mood it inspired, came recollections of a singular 
incident connected w^ith the history of my own family. The 
yellow fever raged fearfully in Boston, the last part of the 
eighteenth century. The panic was so universal that wives 
forsook their dying husbands, in some cases, and mothers their 
children, to escape the contagious atmosphere of the city. 
Funeral rites were generally omitted. The "death-carts," sent 
into every part of the town, were so arranged as to pass through 
each street every half hour. At each house known to contain 
a victim of the fever, they rung a bell, and called "Bring out 
your dead." When the lifeless forms were brought out, they 
were wrapped in tarred sheets, put into the cart, and carried to 
to the burial-place, unaccompanied by relatives. In most 
instances, in fact, relatives had fled before the first approach of 



380 LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 

tlie fatal disease. One of ray father's brothers became a 
victim to the pestilence. When the first symptoms appeared, 
his wife sent the children into the country, and herself remained 
to attend upon him. Her friends warned her against such 
rashness. They told her it would be death to her, and no 
benefit to him; for he would soon be too ill to know who 
attended upon him. These arguments made no impression on 
her afiectionate heart. She felt that it would be a life-long 
satisfaction to her to know who attended upon him, if he did 
not. She accordingly stayed and watched him with unremitting 
care. This, however, did not avail to save him. He grew 
worse and worse, and finally died. Tliose who went round 
with the death carts had visited the chamber, and seen that 
the end was near. They now came to take the body. His 
wife refused to let it go. She told me that she never knew 
how to account for it, but though he was perfectly cold and 
rigid, and to every appearance quite dead, there was a power- 
ful impression on her mind that life was not extinct. The men 
were overborne by the strength of her conviction, though their 
own reason was opposed to it. The half hour again came 
round, and again was heard the solemn words, "Bring out your 
dead." The wife again resisted their importunities; but this 
time the men were more resolute. They said the duty 
assigned to them was a painful one; but the health of the 
city required punctual obedience to the orders they received; if 
they ever expected the pestilence to abate, it must be by a 
prompt removal of the dead, and immediate fumigation of the 
infected apartments. She pleaded and pleaded, and even knelt 
to them in an agony of tears; continually saying, "I am sure 
he is not dead." The men represented the utter absurdity of 
such an idea; but finally, overcome by her tears, again departed. 
With trembling haste she renewed her efibrts to restore life. 
She raised his head, rolled his limbs in hot flannel, and placed 
hot onions on his feet. The dreaded half hour again came 
round, and found him as cold and rigid as ever. She renewed 
her entreaties so desperately, that the messengers began to 
think a little gentle force would be necessary. They accord- 
ingly attempted to remove the body against her will; but she 
threw herself upon it, and clung to it with such frantic strength, 
that they coukl not easily loosen her grasp. Imj)ressed by the 
remarkable energy of her will, they relaxed their efibrts. To 
all their remonstrances, she answered, "If you bury him, you 



LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 381 

shall bury me with him." At last, by dint of reasoning on the 
necessity of the case, they obtained from her a promise, that, if 
he showed no signs of life before they again came round, she 
woukl make no further opposition to the removal. Having 
gained this res])ite, she hung the watch up on the bedpost, and 
renewed her efforts with redoubled zeal. She placed kegs of 
hot water about him, forced brandy between his teeth, breathed 
into his nostrils, and held hartshorn to his nose; but still the 
body lay motionless and cold. She looked anxiously at the 
watch; in five minutes the promised half hour would expire, 
and those dreadful voices would be heard, passing through the 
stVeet. Hopelessness came over her; she dropped the head 
she had been sustaining ; her hand trembled violently ; and the 
hartshorn she had been holding was spilled on the pallid face. 
Accidentally, the position of the head had become slightly 
tipped backward, and the powerful liquid flowed into his 
nostrils. Instantly there was a short, quick gasp — a struggle — 
his eyes opened; and when the death-men again came, they 
found him sitting up in the bed. He is still alive, and has 
enjoyed unusually good health. 

Instances of this kind, though very rare, are well known to 
physicians under the name of asphyxia. The mere possibility 
of their occurrence is sufficient reason why the body should 
remain two or three days, before it is committed to the earth. 
I believe no nation buries with such haste as Americans. The 
ancients took various precautions. They washed and anointed 
the body many successive times before it was carried to the 
burial. The Tvomans cut off' a joint of the finger, to make sure 
that life was extinct, before they lighted the funeral pile, 

The picturesque little chaj)el, with its bell that never sjDcaks 
but in sorrow, led my thoughts into dismal paths. But my 
imagination always turns away quickly from gloomy associa- 
tions. I soon began to think how beautifully appropriate it 
was that a bell should call to worship. Its sonorous voice, 
filling the whole air with royal sound, heard so sublimely clear 
above all the rattle and din of our poor everyday life, renders 
it worthy of the sacred office. Perhaps it was a vague feeling 
of this, which made the devout of former centuries believe that 
bells had peculiar power to drive away evil spirits; a super- 
stition which was in fact the origin of bell-tolling at funerals. 
The Turks, though a much better people than we give them 
credit for, resemble evil spirits in their abhorrence of bells. 



382 LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 

Nothing delighted them more in taking Constantinople, than 
the power it gave them to silence the "detestable bells.'' 

One would think that a chime of bells must be delightful to 
any human ear. I remember with pleasure the chimes from 
Christ Church, in Philadel})hia. On Friday, the great market 
day there, it is customary to welcome the farmers into the city, 
by ringing a cheerful peal. Coming in with their loads of fruit 
and p>oultry, they very naturally understand the bells to say, 

** Now all ye married men, 
Get your money ready." 

This chime even bewitched one of the Society of Friends, 
though they rigidly abjure music. When the Quakers first rose 
up, a form of real sj^iritual life in the midst of sensuality and 
sham, music was most shamefully desecrated to low and 
profligate purposes. But so was language, and so was religion. 
If tones were excommunicated for being made mediums of sin. 
words should have been banished too. How the kingdom of 
heaven can come on earth without music in it, is more than I 
can imagine. It would make the company of the saints like a 
spring-time without birds, or a year without blossoms. 

So it seems, thought Caleb Offley, member of the aforesaid 
religious society. He was half an idiot, and creation spoke to 
him in stammering and imperfect language; but music glided 
into his soul, like the tones of a mother's voice. He was 
forever lingering around Christ Church, listening to the beloved 
chimes. At last, he came to ring the bells better than any 
other person could. The Quakers reproved him for such light 
and frivolous employment of his time. The poor simple soul 
tried to stay away; but the sonorous chimes beckoned and 
called to him ever, and the passion became too strong for him. 
Those who liked to make use of his skill, injudiciously tempted 
him with wine and strong drinks. His religious friends again 
interfered and the culprit ])romised to take their advice. But 
after a while, he appeared before the elders, and said, "I have 
done very wrong, and I will try to do better. I will give u]> 
drink; I will give up anything you tell me; but, friends, I 
caiH give up the bells." He was henceforth one of the bell- 
ringers on all public occasions, till the day of his death. 

Trinity Church, in Broadway, when completed, will have its 
chime of eight bells, which now lie silent, for w^ant of a tower 
to swing in. There probably will then be some contention 



LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 383 

between New York and Philadelphia, which has the best chime ; 
as there now is, which has the grandest water-works and the 
most beautiful cemetery. Like the two chimes in Richmond, 
England, the burden of the song will be, 

*' Who rings the best? Who rings the best ?" 
"I do. I do." 

A traveller who found it difficult to decide which was 
superior in sweetness and distinctness of tone, gave the last the 
palm, on the strength of her own assertion. I should reverse 
the decision; for I never yet knew transcendent genius prone 
to sing its own praises. 

I had no idea how pleasant an effect could be produced by 
hand-bells, until I heard the Swiss Bell Kingers. It is a 
remarkable exhibition of mechanical skill and accuracy of ear. 
The company consists of seven men, who ought to bear the 
bell-toned Swedish name of Silfverling. They use forty-two 
bells, varying in size, from a large cow-bell, to the smallest 
dinner-bell. They had these manufactured for them, and 
carefully attuned by scraping the metal. It took nine months 
of patient practice to attune them to a perfect concert pitch. 
The clappers are upon a spring. A piece of leather goes through 
the ball of the tongue; the leather strikes the bell, and renders 
the tones more soft and sweet. They place the fore-finger and 
thumb upon the sides of the bell, and thus obtain a steady hold, 
while they prevent disturbing vibrations. 

The lowest bell is the lowest C of the treble clef, and they 
run up three octaves and one fourth, with all the semi-tones. 
Four of them play the Air; the other three play a harmony in 
the lowest octave of the bells, similar to a guitar accompaniment 
to a soDg. They play not merely simple carrillons, but ela- 
borate and difficult music; the overture to Era Diavolo, for 
instance. They trill notes beautifully. The effect of the 
combined sounds is extremely sweet, liquid, and melodious, like 
a powerful music box. As they often change places and bells, 
during the performance of a single piece, it is inconvenient to 
use notes, and they trust entirely to memory, which practice 
has made wonderfully perfect. They change their bells as 
rapidly as printers take up their types. If one of them rings a 
false note, it is instantly felt by all the others, and any one of 
them can tell instantaneously all the notes that are to be phived 
for ten bars ahead. 



384 LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 

Their skill and exactness seem almost equal to the chimers of 
Cambridge, in England, who "rang a peal of 6600 changes, 
with such regularity and harmony, that in each thousand 
changes the time did not vary one sixteenth of a minute, and 
the compass of the last thousand was exactly equal to the 
tirst." 

If I were gifted with power to utter the music that struggles 
forever within me, I could not submit to such restraint in the 
mode of utterance. I should break all the bells in desperation. 



LETTER XXV. 

October 14th, 1844. 

After an interval of several months, I have again heard Ole 
Bui, with quite as much pleasure as when his first performance 
took me by surprise. My soul loves to follow his music, as it 
glides from passionate energy into fairy grace; now wandering 
away in dreamy poetic reverie, and now leaping up with sudden 
joy, like a bright fountain in the sunshine. It has for me a charm 
like the Tempest and the Midsummer's Night Dream. The 
instrument, itself, increases the resemblance, with "its appe- 
tising harshness, its racy sharp violinity." "As Shakespeare 
among poets, is the Cremona among instruments," says Bulwer; 
and certainly nothing equals it for beauty and delicacy of tone, 
variety of expression, and fitting utterance of the deepest and 
tenderest emotions. Most instruments are limited by their 
construction. Thus high, and no higher, can the notes go, 
whoever plays upon them. But the violin becomes whatsoever 
it is willed to be by the soul that wakes its melody. Its caj^aci- 
ties are infinite. It is like the human heart, with its laughter 
and its wailing, its sighs and shrieks, its love, and fear, and 
sorrow, and its asj^irations that go beyond the stars. While all 
otlier musical instruments have been gradually changed in 
structure, this alone, through the lapse of three centuries, as 
Sphor informs us, has remained in its original simplicity. The 
royal voice with which it utters the inspirations of genius 
has consecrated it to my imagination, and it brings a flush to 
my cheek to hear it called a fiddle. But this is foolish. The 
most common and universal ever lies nearest to the infinite. 
It would be curious to know how much climate has had to do 



LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 385 

with the flashing energy and impassioned earnestness of this 
Norwegian minstrel. The scenery and sounds, to which we are 
accustomed from infancy, are a spiritual atmosphere, impercepti- 
bly fashioning the growth of our souls ; and a nervous organisa- 
tion so acute and delicate as his, must have been peculiarly 
susceptible to all sensuous influences. 

Where on this planet is a place so sublimely appropriate as 
the rocky coast of Norway, to the newly invented ^olian sea 
signals? Metal pipes, attached to floating buoys, are placed 
amonof the breakers, and through these do the winds lift their 
warning voices, louder and louder, as the sea rages more and 
more fiercely. Here is a magnificent storm-organ, on which to 
play "Wind of the winter night, whence comest thou]" 

On this coast has Ole Bui, from childhood, heard the waves 
roar their mighty bass to the shrill soprano of the winds, and 
has seen it all subside into suntiecked, rippling silence. There, 
in view of mighty mountains, sea-circled shores, and calm, deep, 
blue fiords, shut in by black precipices and tall green forests, 
has he listened to " the fresh mighty throbbings of the heart of 
Nature." Had he lived in the sunny regions of Greece or 
Italy, instead of sea girt Norway, with its piled-up mountains, 
and thundering avalanches, and roaring water-falls, and glancing 
auroras, and the shrill wliis[)ering of the northern wind through 
broad forests of pines, I doubt whether his violin could ever 
have discoursed such tumultuous life, or lulled itself to rest 
with such deep-breathing tenderness. 

I know not what significance the Nord-men have in the 
world's spiritual history; but it must be deep. Our much 
boasted Anglo-Saxon blood is but a rivulet from the great 
Scandinavian sea. The Teutonic language, "with its powerful 
primeval words — keys to the being of things" — is said by the 
learned to have come from the East, the source from which both 
light and truth dawned upon the world. This language has 
everywhere mixed itself with modern tongues, and forms the 
bone and nerve of our own. To these Nord-men, with their 
deep reverence, their strong simplicity, their wild, struggJe- 
loving will, we owe the invention of the organ, and of Gothic 
.•irchitecture. In these modern times, they have sent us Sweden- 
borg, that deep in-seeing prophet, as yet imperfectly understood, 
either by disciples or opponents; and Frederika Bremer, 
o;liding like sun-warmth into the hearts of many nations; and 
Thorwaldsen, with his serene power and majestic grace; and 

2 B 



386 LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 

Beethoven, with aspirations that leap forth beyond the "flaming 
bounds of time and space;" and Ole Bui, with the primeval 
harmonies of creations vibrating through his soul in infinite 
variations. Beverence to the Nord-men; for assuredly their 
strong free utterance comes to us from the very heart of things. 
Influences that pass into the soul from the outer world, 
inevitably transmit themselves through music, even more than 
through the other arts ; and thus transmitted, they reproduce 
their images in the soul that hears. If I stood suddenly in the 
midst of that sublime and romantic Northern scenery ; if my 
ear caught, for the first time, the voice of some peasant maiden, 
warbling the wild, simple, plaintive airs of Norway, memory 
might puzzle me with the question, "Has my soul been here 
before me?" For the subtlest of all essences is this spiritual 
magnetism, which, by continual transmission and re-transmission 
pervades our life. Even on our physical being do the sensuous 
influences leave their mark. They classify the nations, and are 
sometimes strongly impressed on individuals. They would 
always be so, if we were free and true; for our bodies would 
then become transparent mediums of the spirit. Wordsworth 
thus describes the young maiden, to whom nature was " both 
law and impulse" : 

" She shall lean her ear 
In many a secret place, 

Where ri\mlets dance their wayward round, 
And Beauty, born of murmuring sound, 
Shall pass into her face." 

The engraved likeness of Ole Bui often reminds me of these 
lines. It seems listening to one of his own sweet strains of 
melody, passing away, away — and vanishing into the common 
air, fine as the mist scattered afar by the fountains. The effect, 
thus transmitted in form by the artist, reproduces its cause 
again; for as I look upon it, a whirling spray of sound goes 
dancing through my memory, to the clink of fairy castanets. 
When I look at Domenichino's Cum^ean sibyl, and Alston's 
wonderful picture of the Lady Hearing Music, my soul involun- 
tarily listens, and sometimes hears faint wandering strains of 
melody. 

The expression of scenery and character were very clearly 
conveyed to me in Ole Bui's Fantasia of Scottish melodies. 
Most of the tunes I could distinguish only through a mist, they 
whirled after each other so rapidly, and were twined together 



LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 387 

with such a graceful arabesque of variations. But the whole 
of Scotland's heart seemed to be poured forth in it. The 
plaintive voice of domestic love, among a serious and earnest 
people; the reverential feeling of a mountain race; the pride of 
ancestral clans; the romantic loyalty that would defend a 
Stuart unto death ; the stern strength of Presbyterianism ; the 
marching of regiments tlirough the Highlands, to the shrill 
sound of the bagpipe ; and the free voice of the hunter, o'er the 
hills an' far awa'. I could imagine how spiritual beings could 
thus utter all things in tones, and tell a nation's history in music. 

His Fantasia of Irish airs is as plainly the voice of a people 
who have suffered much and long. A sort of suppressed sigh 
runs through all their warm breathings of love for Ireland. 
Their patriotism utters itself in the voice of a widow's child, 
singing to his lonely and desolate mother. Even the merry 
tunes of Ireland tell the same sad story. It is not the jovial 
carouse of England, or the light-hearted carol of France. It is the 
convulsive reaction, the sudden leaping up, of a depressed spirit. 

The fate of the poor African, too, is told in his simple 
melodies, sp full of wild animal gaiety, so easily subsiding into 
mournful modulations. 

This spiritual expression of music is heard in very different 
degrees by different people, and by some not at all. One man 
remarked, as he left Ole Bui's concert, ''Well, there is no such 
thing as getting a dollar's worth of music out of a fiddle, in 
three hours." Of the same concert, a man of thorough musical 
science, and deep feeling for his beautiful art, w^rites to me 
thus: ''Ole Bui has certainly impressed me, as no man ever 
impressed me before. The most glorious sensation I ever had, 
was to sit in one of his audiences, and feel that all were 
elevated to the same pitch with myself. My impulse was to 
speak to every one as to an intimate friend. The most in- 
different person was a living soul to me. The most remote 
and proud, I did not fear or despise. In that element, they 
were all accessible, nay, all worth reaching. This surely was 
the highest testimony to his great art, and his great soul." 

An eloquent writer, who publishes under the fictitious 
signature of John Waters, describes his first impressions of 
Lizst's piano-playing, with an enthusiasm that would doubtless 
seem very ridiculous to many who listened to the same sounds. 
He says, that "with blow after blow upon the instrument, with 
his whole force, he planted large colunuiar masses of sound, like 



388 LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 

the Giant's Causeway. The instrument rained, hailed, thun- 
dered, moaned, whistled, shrieked, round those basaltic columns, 
in every cry that the tempest can utter in its wildest paroxysms 
of wrath 

"Then we were borne along, through countless beauties of rock, 
and sk;^, and foliage, to a grotto, by the side of which was a 
fountain that seemed one of the Eyes of the Earth, so large 
and darkly brilliant was it, so deep and so serene. Here we 
listened to the voices rather than the songs of birds, when the 
music by degrees diminished, then fluttered and ceased." 

A lady, to whom he spoke of the concert, acknowledged that 
the sounds had brought up very similar pictures in her soul ; 
but probably not ten of the large audience listened in such a 
spirit. That it was thus received by any^ shows that it was in 
the music, whether the composer was aware of it or not ; and 
genius only can produce these magical effects. 

To Him who made the ear a medium of pleasure to the soul, 
I am humbly grateful for delight in sweet sounds; and still 
more deeply am I grateful that the spiritual sense of music is 
more and more opened to me. I have joy in the consciousness 
of growth, as I can imagine a flower might be pleased to feel 
itself, unfolding and expanding to the sun-light. This expres- 
siveness of music, no man ever revealed to me like Ole Bui ; 
and therefore, in my joy and gratitude, I strive, like a delighted 
child, to bring all manner of garlands and jewels, wherewith to 
crown his genius. 

Here is a wreath of wild-flowers to welcome his return : 

Welcome to thee, Ole Bui ! 

A welcome, warm and free ! 
For heart and memory are full 

Of thy rich minstrelsy. 

'Tis music for the tuneful rills 
To flow to from the verdant hills ; 
Music such as first on earth 
Gave to the Aurora birth. 

Music for the leaves to dance to ; 
Music such as sunbeams glance to; 
Treble to the ocean's roar, 
On some old resounding shore. 

Silvery showers from the fountains ; 
Mists unrolling from the mountains ; 
Lightning flashing through a cloud, 
When the wmds are piping loud. 



LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 389 

Music full of warbling graces, 
Like to birds in forest places, 
Gushing, trilling, wliirring round, 
'Mid the pine trees' murm'ring sound. 

The martin scolding at the wren, 

Which sharply answers back again, 

Till across the angry song , 

Strains of laughter run along. 

Now leaps the bow, with airy bound, 
Like dancer springing from the ground. 
And now like autumn wind comes sighing 
Over leaves and blossoms dying. 

The lark now singeth from afar 
Her carol to the morning star, 
A clear soprano rising high, 
Ascending to the inmost sky. 

And now the scattered tones are flying, 
Like sparks in midnight darkness dying, 
Gems from rockets in the sky, 
Falling — falling — gracefully. 

As on a harp with golden strings. 

All nature breathes through thee, 
And with her thousand voices sings 
The infinite and free. 

Of beauty she is la^dsh ever ; 

Her urn is always full ; 
But to our earth she giveth never 

Another Ole Bui. 



LETTER XXVI. 

October 21, 1844. 

Many of the Millerites believed that last week was appointed 
for the burning of the world; not ''positively for the last time 
this season," how^ever, for a majority suppose it will occur 
to-morrow. Their system of theological navigation is supplied 
with elaborately prepared charts, from which they learn that 
"the Lord will certainly leave the mercy-seat on the 13th of 
this present October, and appear visibly in the clouds of heaven 
on the 22nd." Alas for every one of us, sinners or saints, if our 
Father should leave the mercy-seat, even for so brief an 
interval ! 



390 LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 

It was stated some time ago, in tlie papers, that Mr. Miller 
had given it as his opinion, that if the prophecy was not fulfilled, 
as expected, last spring, it would occur soon after the autumnal 
equinox. Meanwhile, even the memory of this excitement 
seemed to have passed away from the ever busy crowd. But 
with the autumnal equinox, it returned with renewed fervour. 
Mrs. Higgins, a young woman from Boston, is here preaching 
with that enthusiasm and earnestness of conviction, which 
always imparts a degree of eloquence. She and her zealous 
coadjutors are creating a prodigious ferment, and making many 
proselytes ; all of whom are welcomed to their ranks as brands 
plucked from immediate burning. 

A man, who has tended an apple-stall near the Park, went 
to hear her, and straightway gave away all his fruit and cakes, 
to the great delight of the children, who became warmly 
interested to have this faith spread through all the cake-shops 
and apple-stalls. A vender of stoves, near by, has shut up his 
shop, with the announcement that no more stoves will be needed 
on this earth. A shoe-maker began to give away all his stock ; 
but his son came in during the process, and casued him to be 
sent to an insane asylum, till the excitement of his mind abated. 
A shop in the Bowery mounted a placard, on which was inscribed, 
in large letters. Muslin for Ascension Eobes! I know not 
whether this was done for waggery, or from that spirit of trade, 
which is ever willing to turn a penny on war, pestilence, or 
conflagration. 

Thousands of minds are in a state of intense alarm, but I 
have heard of very few instances of stolen money restored, or 
falsehoods acknowledged, as a preparation for the dreaded event. 
One man, of whom I bought some calico, took two cents a yard 
less than he asked. When I thanked him, he said, " I suppose 
you are surprised that I should diminish the price, after you 
have bought the article; but the fact is, I have been hearing 
Mr. Miller, and I thought he proved his doctrine clear enough 
to satisfy anybody. If we are all to come to an end so soon, 
it is best to be pretty moderate and fair in our dealings." 
"But we cannot come to an end," said I. "Oh, I meant the 
world, and our bodies," he replied. " And if they come to an 
end in '98 instead of '44, is it not still best to be always 
moderate and fair in our dealings'?" said I. He admitted the 
premises; but as one admits an abstraction. 

A prophet who appeared in London, many years ago, and 



LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 391 

predicted the destruction of the world, from Scripture authority, 
produced a much more decided effect in driving people into 
good works. Under his preaching, very large sums of money 
were restored, and seventy thousand persons were married, 
who had formed illicit connections. 

This reminds me of a fine old building, demolished a few 
years ago, in the north part of Boston. It was built by Sir 
Harry Falkland, who held a high office under the Crown, in 
old colonial days. I think Cooper has described it in some of 
his early works. When I saw^ it, it was inhabited by several 
labouring families, and was in a poor state of preservation. 
But through all the dust and scratches, I could perceive that 
the tesselated floor of various coloured woods, with the baronet's 
coat of arms in the centre, had once been very beautiful. 
The panels were a series of landscapes in gilded borders ; and 
every now and then, in some closet or recess, one was startled 
by an owl, a falcon, or an eagle, done in fresco. Tradition said 
that Lady Falkland required her daughters to dance on the 
variegated oaken floor, with waxed shoes, till it shone like a 
mirror. When one of the daughters was married, the little 
slave, who brought wine and cake on a silver salver, tripped 
on the smooth surface ; whereupon she received a whipping ; 
as have many other persons in this world, for tripping in paths 
made needlessly slippery. 

Tradition further says, that Lady Falkland was not always 
the wife of Sir Harry. She accompanied him when he was 
ambassador to Portuo-al, and lived with him without the sane- 
tion of the law, for several years. The great earthquake of 
1755 came ; and Lisbon reeled and tottered from its founda- 
tions. They saw houses crack asunder, and the earth yawn in 
the streets. They thought the end of the world had come ; and 
the first thing they did was to run to a church, and beseech a 
l^riest to marry them, amid the heaving and trembling of the 
elements. 

Some of the Millerites have written glowing letters, intreating 
me to make haste to escape from the wrath that is impending 
over all unbelievers. One of them has seen me in a vision, 
radiating light, and considered this a sjiecial indication that I 
was to be summoned to ascend with the saints. I feel sincerely 
grateful to these kind, well-meaning persons, for their anxiety 
to save me. But if there has been no preparation in my previ- 
ous life, the effort to make ready in a few days could avail but 



392 LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 

little. Even if I thonght tlie end of all things was so very near, 
I could see no better way of preparing for it, than by purity of 
life and conversation, a heart at peace with all men, and dili- 
gent efforts to do all in my power to save and bless. And if 
the earth is to revolve on its axis for millions of years, still in 
that direction only, lies the spirit's ascending path. 

What matters it to me whether the world is destroyed in 
1844, or in 18,044'? For me it must soon cease to exist, even 
if nature pursues its usual course. And what will it concern 
my spirit, in the realms beyond, whether this ball of earth and 
stones still continues its circling march through space, or falls 
into the bosom of the sun 1 Let spirit change forms as it will, 
I know that nothing is really lost. The human soul contains 
within itself the universe. If the stars are blotted out, and the 
heavens rolled up as a scroll, they are not lost. They have 
merely dropped the vesture that we saw them by. " Life never 
dies ; matter dies off it, and it lives elsewhere." 

My belief in spirit is so strong, that to me matter appears 
the illusion. My body never seems to me to be myself. Death 
never seems to me an end of life, but a beginning. I suppose it 
is owing to this vivid and realising sense of spiritual existence, 
that the destruction of the visible world would have so little 
power to affect me, even if I foresaw its approach. It would 
be but a new mode of passing into life. For the earth I have 
the same sort of affection that I have for a house in which I 
have dwelt; but it matters not to me whether I pass away from 
it, or we pass away together. If I live a true- and humble life, 
.1 shall carry with me all its forms of love and beauty, safe from 
the touch of material fire. 

I am sorry that the Millerites have attracted the attention of 
a portion of our population, who delight to molest them, though 
it is more from mirth than malice. All sincere convictions 
should be treated respectfully. Neither ridicule nor violence 
can overcome delusions of this sort, or diminish their power to 
injure. Such crowds are continually about the doors of the 
Millerite meetings, that it is dangerous to life and limb to effect 
an entrance. Stones and brickbats are thrown in, and crackers 
and torpedoes explode under their feet. The other night, while 
Mrs. Higgins was exhorting and prophesying, with tempestu- 
ous zeal, some boys fired a pile of shavings outside the window 
near which she was standing, and at the same time kindled 
several Roman candles. The blue, unearthly light of these 



LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 393 



fire-works illuminated the whole interior of the building with 
intense brilliancy, for a moment. 

The eflfect on the highly excited congregation was terrible. 
Some fainted, and some screamed. Several serious accidents 
happened amid the general rush ; and one man, it is said, was 
so deranged with nervous terror, that he went home and at- 
tempted to cut his throat. The mayor, and a strong array of 
constables, now attend the meetings, to prevent a repetition of 
these dangerous tricks. But the preachers say that no protec- 
tion is needed ; for four angels are stationed at the four corners 
of the earth, and they have sealed the foreheads of all the saints, 
.so that no harm can come to them. 

I often hear this called a singular delusion ; but to me it 
seems by no means singular. The old Jewish idea of an ex- 
ternal kingdom with the Messiah passed into Christian belief, 
with many other traditions. In the first centuries of the 
church, there was a sect which believed that the Koman empire 
would be overthrown, that all the wicked would be destroyed, 
and the faithful would arise from the dead, to enjoy a paradise 
on earth with the faithful living. Every ear of wheat would 
then produce ten thousand grains, and every grain ten pounds 
of wheat flour ; and every vine would yield millions on millions 
of measures of wine. The New Jerusalem would descend from 
heaven, and furnish them with splendid Louses. 

The end of the world was very strongly expected by some in 
the year 1000. A sect of this kind rose among the Lutherans, 
soon after the Thirty Years' war. Bengel, a famous mystical 
writer, calculated that the millennium would begin in 1836, and 
last two thousand years. Up to the present period, the literal 
theological teaching of our churches has tended to cherish 
similar ideas. The people have been told for a series of years, 
that the world would be destroyed by material fire, and that 
the Messiah would come visibly in the heavens, to reign as a 
king on the earth. It is but one step more, to decide when 
these events will occur. The Jews, who, in the first advent of 
a Messiah, expected a powerful prince, to conquer the Romans, 
and restore the national glory of Judea, were not more grossly 
external in their application of the prophecies, than are most of 
the theological commentators on the second advent. Yet, 
unconscious of the limitation of their own vision, they speak 
^vith patronising compassion of the blindness of the Jews. If 
men applied half as much common sense to their theological 



394 LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 

investigations, as they do to every other subject, they could not 
worship a God, w^ho, having filled this world with millions of 
his children, would finally consign them all to eternal destruc- 
tion, except a few who could be induced to believe in very 
difficult and doubtful explanations of prophecies, handed down 
to us through the long lapse of ages. 

Beneath the veil of this external belief, there is, however, 
spiritual significance and prophecy. The old heavens and the 
old earth must pass away, and they are passing away. In 
other words, the religious sentiment of Christendom is changing ; 
and of course old theological opinions, which are merely the 
garb of sentiments, are everywhere falling off, like tattered, 
scanty, and ill-fitting garments. As the Church changes, the 
State inevdtably changes, too; and the civil and social condition 
of man is slowly ascending to a higher plane. 

This i^felt, even by those who deprecate it, and would avert 
it, if they could ; and pressing thus on the universal conscious- 
ness, its ultimate and most external form is Millerism. The 
coming of a new heaven and a new earth cannot reveal itself to 
their apprehension through any other medium, than the one in 
which they announce it. Walking in the misty twilight of 
outward interpretations, they easily mistake the angel approach- 
ing with a halo round his head, for a demon of vengeance, torch 
in hand, to set the world on fire. 



LETTER XXVII. 

November 7, 1844. 

A French writer describes November as "the month in which 
Englishmen hang and drown themselves." No wonder they 
are desperate, when they have fog superadded to the usual 
gloomy accompaniments of retreating summer. In early life, 
I loved scenes that were tinged with sadness; because they 
invited to repose the exuberant gaiety of my own spirit : 

" In youth, we love the darksome lawn 
Brushed by the owlet's wing ; 
Then twihght is preferred to daAvn, 
And Autumn to the Spring. 

^ Sad fancies do we then affect, 

In luxury of disrespect 
To our own prodigal excess 
Of too familiar happiness. " 



LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 395 

But now, alas, I have no joyousness to spare : and I would fain 
borrow from the outward that radiance which no longer super- 
abounds within. 

I felt this oppressively the other day, when I went over to 
Staten Island. Here and there, in the desolate fields, a long 
withered leaf fluttered on some dried corn-stalk, standing up 
like Memory in the lone stubble-field of the Past, where once 
had been the green budding of hopes, and the golden harvest 
of fruition. The woods, which I had seen in the young 
leafiness of June, in the verdant strength of summer, and in 
their rich autumnal robe, were now scantily dressed in dismal 
brown. Some of the trees had dropped the decaying vesture, 
and stood in distinct relief against the cold, grey sky. But I 
found pleasure in their unclothed beauty, its character was so 
various. The boughs of no two trees ever have the same 
arrangement. Nature ahvays in'odnces individuals ; She never 
produces classes. Man is at war with her laws, when he seeks 
to arrange opmions into classes, under the name of sects; or em- 
ployments into classes, on account of sex, colour, or condition. 

The woods of Staten Island are very beautiful in their 
infinitely various shading, from the deepest to the liveliest 
green. But neither here, nor anywhere else in the State of 
New York, have I seen such a noble growth of trees, as in 
New England. When I think of the magnificent elms of 
Northampton and Springfield, the kings of the forest here 
dwindle into mere chvarfs in comparison. This slight asso- 
ciation of thought brought vividly before my inward eye the 
picturesque valley of the Connecticut. I saw Mount Tom 
looking at me grey and cold in the distance. I saw old 
Holyoke in various garbs; fantastic, grand, or lovely, as mists, 
cloud-shadows, storm, or' sunlio;lit, cradled themselves on his 
rugged breast. There always seemed to me something 
peculiarly Christian in the character of mountain scenery; 
forever pointing upv/ard, rising with such serene elevation 
above the earth, and overlooking the ivhole, with such 
all-embracing vision. In the groves, I think of dryads; by the 
ocean, I have many fancies of Nereides and Tritons ; but never 
do I think of 

" Those lightsome footed maids, 
The Oreads, that frequent the lifted mountains." 

There is something in the quiet grandeur of the everlasting 
hills, that rises above the classic into the holy. 



396 LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 

Tlieir presence could never quite reconcile me to the absence 
of the sea. Mv soul always yearns for that great type of 
power and freedom; its ever recurring tides chained by the 
law of Necessity, its mighty and restless waves fighting with 
the strength and energy of Free "Will. The fierce old conflict 
that keeps our nature forever striving and forever bound; 
forever one hand winged and the other chained. 

But the mountains remind us of no such battles. They 
raise us to the region where necessity and will are one. 
Calmly they breathe into us the religious sentiment, and we 
receive it in unconscious quietude. Like Wordsworth's shep- 
herd, who 

"Had early learned 

To reverence the volume which displays 

The mystery, the life which cannot die ; 

But in the mountains did he/eeZ his faith. 

There did he see the wi'iting. All things there 

Breathed immortality, revolving life. 

There littleness was not : the least things 

Seemed infinite. " 

Filled with such emotions, I greet the mountains with 
reverent love, when I enter Massachusetts from the west, and 
see them rising up all around the horizon, in undulating lines, 
as if left there by retreating waves. At every turn, they tower 
before you veiled in the blue mist of distance. Look which 
way you will, you "cannot get shut of them,'^ as New Yorkers 
say. In this respect they have often reminded me of remark- 
ably clear visions of inward light, guiding me in my spiritual 
pilgrimage, through perilous seasons of doubt and conflict; so 
high above my own unaided intellectual ^perceptions, that they 
served not merely as a candle for the present moment, but 
remain like brilliant beacon-lights over the wdde waters of the 
future. 

How the blue hill -tops kiss the skies ! 
Far as the eye can see. 

Rich wooded undulations rise, 
And mountains look on me. 

Under the broad sun's mellow light, 

Gilding each shrub and tree, 
How calmly, beautifully bright, 

The mountains look on me. 

Rising above the vapoury cloud, 

In outline boldly free, 
Serene when storms are shrieking loud, * 

The mountains look on me. 



LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 397 

Their sinuous wave-like form seems cast 

From a subsiding sea ; 
Of quiet, after tempests past, 

The mountains speak to me. 

Thus they of states sublimely high 

A type must surely be ; — 
Of close communion with the sky 

The mountains speak to me. 

And in the scenery of my mind, 

Rising from memory's sea, 
Such holy states stanil well-defined 

And ever look on me. 

Upon such heights, in deep repose 

I've watched with bended knee ; 
Transfigixred forms around me rose. 

And still they look on me. 

Those memories serenely high, 

My soul can never flee ; 
Therefore of converse with the sky 

The mountains speak to me. 

With the remembrance of IMouiit Holyoke, came the twenty- 
two spires seen from its sunmiit; and they reminded me of the 
following paragraph from a newspaper, which did not seem to 
me very much like mountain preaching: "There is no one thing 
which helps to establish a man's character and standing in 
society, more than a steady attendance at church, and a proper 
regard for the first day of the week. Go to church ! If you 
are a young man, just entering \\'[)0w business, it will establish 
your C7'edit. What capitalist ivoidd not sooner trust a beginner, 
who, instead of dissipating his time, his character, and his 
money, in dissolute company, attended to his business on 
week-days, and on the Sabbath appeared in the house of God?" 
This recommendation of religion for the sake of credit, made 
me think of the interesting newspaper, published by inmates 
of the Insane Asylum, in Vermont. One of the winters tells 
the story of an old aunt of his, who loudly praised a rich man 
for building a great brick meeting-house. 'Heaven prosjDered 
him in the undertaking,' said she; 'he has sold out; the 
underground part for victualing cellars, the basement story for 
grocery shops; and after selling the pews, he had nearly 
fifteen hundred dollars more than the whole cost him ; and next 
week, it is to be dedicated to the Lord.' 

"iNTow, we crazy ones think that churches should be built 
by benevolent and pious individuals, and then unreservedly 



398 LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 

dedicated to God, and opened to all who have a desire to 
worship in them. This building churches like splendid palaces, 
making the pews the individual property of those who are 
able to buy them, and turning the button against all who are 
not owners, drives from those houses the poor, to whom the 
gospel was first preached freely, and for whose comfort and 
consolation it was emphatically sent." 

This is not crazy reasoninsj, though pointed against a very 
common manifestation of the spirit of trade among us. No 
branch of business is more respectable than these profitable 
investments in the name of the Lord. But those who engage 
in them are not aware how rapidly they tend to decrease 
popular reverence for the public institutions of religion. 

The exhortation to go to church for the sake of character, is 
a oTowth from the same stock. It reveals a wide contrast 

o 

between the present times and the old Puritan days of spon- 
taneous zeal, when people frequently walked ten or fifteen miles 
to attend a place of worship. Good old President Edwards 
and his contemporaries would hardly know where they were in 
an age like this. He was a fine sample, in manners and 
character, of a class that exists no longer among us; a 
clergyman of the olden time, when they walked on earth as 
the vicegerents of God. His father was such a stickler for 
clerical dignity, that he was in the habit of making his common 
parochial visits in black gown and bands, which are now 
so generally disused, even on state occasions. The son retained 
the efiect of these early lessons through life. He conceived 
his station worthy of so much respect, that his own children 
v/ere in the habit of rising, in token of reverence, whenever he 
entered the family sitting-room. 

The experience of a clergyman of my acquaintance indicates 
what changes have since passed over society. He called on 
one of his parishioners, whose little urchin of a son amused 
himself, unreproved, during the whole visit, with trying to 
throw marbles at the minister's spectacles, so as to hit the 
glasses. Alas for President Edwards, and other sincere ex- 
clusives of that day, if they should re-appear in the midst of 
times like these. Miss Sedgwick says very truly, "The old 
divines preached equality in heaven, but little thought it was 
the kingdom to come on earth. Thoy were the electric chain, 
unconscious of the celestial fire they transmitted. Little 
would they have brooked these days of unquestioned equality 



LETTERS FROM XEW YORK. 399 

of rights, of anti-monopolies, of free publishing, and freer 
thinking." 

From their conservatism, we now rush so wildly, to the other 
extreme, that reverential souls are frightened, and take shelter 
in the Catholic cathedral, or behind the altars of Puseyism. 
But other worshipping souls, who have no sympathy with the 
mad ofFwhirl of ultra reform, remain quietly trustful; for 
through all the dust, they see plainly that God still governs the 
world. They are calm in the conviction that changes cannot 
come sooner than they are needed. As Carlyle wisely says, 
*' The old skin never drops off till a new one is formed under it." 



LETTEH XXVIII. 

November 20, 1844. 

If you wish to see a commercial age in its ultimate results, 
come and observe life in New York. In one place, you will 
meet walking advertisements, in the form of men and boys, 
perambulating the thoroughfares, hour after hour, with pla- 
cards printed in large letters, mounted on poles. Turn down 
another street, and you will encounter a huge waggon, its white 
cloth cover stamped with advertisements in mammoth type. 
In another place, a black man, with red coat, cocked hat, 
breeches, and buckled shoes, stands at the door of a bazaar, like 
a sign post, to attract attention. In the newspapers, ingenuity 
exhausts its resources in every variety of advertisements. 
These articles are in such demand, that the writing of them is 
a profession by itself, sufficiently profitable to induce men to 
devote their time to it, for a living. The pen employed by Dr. 
Gouraud, the vendor of cosmetics, is peculiarly distinguished in 
this branch of literature ; as you may judge from the following 
quotations : 

A DIALOGUE. 

" Why, bless my soul ! Mrs. C , you are looking more 

charming than ever, this morning. Surely, the Graces must 
have taken you under their special protection ! But tell me, 
dear Anne, the secret (for secret I know there must be), bv 
which you manage to keep your skin so white, your cheeks and 
lips so rosy, and your hair so black and glossy." 



400 LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 

Such was the string of queries put to the beautiful Mrs. 

C by the fashionable Mrs. F (whose charms, by the 

way, were rapidly on the wane), as they casually met at the 
entrance to Stewart's. 

" Well, my dear Mrs. F ," was the naive reply, " my 

secret, as you term it, was first imparted to me through the 
newspapers : I have no hesitation, therefore, in giving it to 
you, in confidence. To Dr. Gouraud alone am I indebted for 
the secret which permits me to bid defiance to the ravages of 
time. The constant use of his Italian Medicated Soap, and 
Spanish Lily White, has given to my skin its alabaster purity 
and clearness ; his Liquid Rouge alone it is that has imparted 
to my cheek its roseate flush, and to my lips its ruby red ; his 
Poudre Subtile speedily removed the unsightly moustache from 
my upper lip ; while one application of his Grecian Hair Dye 
to my grey hair and eye-brows, changed them to their present 
glossy jet ! And now you know my secret, go and do likewise." 

" SINGULAR SCRAP FROM SACREL* HISTORY." 

" Solomon, it is well known, was celebrated for his wisdom. 
But it is not so generally known that he invented a powder, 
highly beautifying to the Queen of Slieba. Such, however, is 
the fact, according to Mahometan commentaries. With 
Solomon the secret of the preparation died ; but now, singular 
as it may appear, after the lapse of so many centuries, it has 
been discovered by Dr. Gouraud, whose Poudre Subtile will 
effectually remove every appearance of beard from the lips." 

If the following are not from the same gifted pen, there must 
be rival talent abroad in the same line : 

"A SORROWFUL STORY OF REAL LIFE." 

" Haven't you seen him in Broadway, with the long, deli" 
cious, silky hair, that waved as the wind blew, and the Bond 
and Bleecker-street ladies longed to revel in the jetty clusters 
with their snowy forked fingers'? Did you ever hear that 
young man's story ? Well, it is a love tale. Poor fellow ! the 
blasted hope of a rich Boston family ! I will not give you the 
particulars, 'tis too sorrowful. Suflice it to say, that at times 
his mind wanders. Do you know what gives such a particular 
charm to him that was once the 'glass of fashion and the mould 
of form ] ' — Bones' Coral Hair Restorative, and Jones' Italian 
Chemical Soap." 



LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 401 



" SINGULAR AFFAIR AT THE PARK THEATRE. 

" In one of the boxes was last night seated a female, with a 
face in which jjenerous nature seemed to have concentrated all 
that can be conceived of female grace, loveliness and beauty ; 
the delicate tinted cheek — white, yet rosy red — the white, long, 
chiselled neck; the high, clear, spotless alabaster forehead; the 
dark, auburn, golden tresses, and the silken eye-lash, formed a 
singular and glorious halo of beauty. In an opposite box sat a 
fashionable family, father, mother, daughter, and two sons ; the 
two latter were looking at the lovely creature opposite. — It is 
not her, said one to the other; I know she was dreadfully 
burned. Some 14 months ago, Miss B. was frightfully burned 
by a steamboat accident on the Mississippi. She did certainly 
recover, but alas, disfigured for life — her face in seams of fiery 
red shrivels of flesh ; her neck in patches of contracted skin ; 
her eye-brows, lashes and hair all burned off. That lovely 
creature in that box is the same Miss B. She has for the last 
few months used Jones' beautifying Italian Chemical Soap on 
her face and skin, Jones' Coral Hair restorative on her head 
and eye-brows, and she is thus restored to blooming grace and 
beauty." 

"OH, MY BACK, I CAN SCARCELY WALK, IT PUTS ME IN SUCH 

PAIN." 

" Such was the expression of a gentleman in Dr. Sherman's 
store, a day or two since. He had taken a severe cold, and 
could not stand erect. He purchased one of the Doctor's 
celebrated Poor Man's Plasters, applied it to the back, and in 
twenty-four hours' time was perfectly relieved from his suffering." 

" A POEM : ADDRESSED TO MESSRS. PEASE AND SON, 

And dedicated to the thousands that have been relieved 
by their invaluable Compound Hoarhound Candy. 

** See where the victim of Consumption sighs — 
With hectic cheeks and spirit blazing eyes — 
Her frame all wasted by disease and pills 
From quacks received, in vain to cure her ills. 
Now look again ! as buoyant as the breeze, 
Behold her bounding under yonder trees ! 
What miracle is this ? What ! she who wore away 
Like a lone sunbeam at the close of day, 
Thus dance along ! Yes ; Pease has kmdly brought 
The Candy here, and thus the magic wrought." 
2 C 



402 LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 

"END OF THE WORLD ! OCTOBER 22, 1844. 

" An extra sheet, just published, and for sale at the Office of 
the New York Su7i, containing a large and splendid Engrav- 
ing, one foot square, graphically representing the final end and 
destruction of the world, the appearance of the Bridegroom, 
and the ascension of the Holy. It also contains Brother 
Miller's last letter ; written Oct. 6th, giving at length his 
reasons for fixing the 10th day of the 7th month (meaning 22nd 
of October, 1844) for the Final Destruction of the World. It 
also contains a long article from the last number of the Mil- 
lerite Paper, published at Boston, and the final farewell of the 
Editor." 

" christians and jews, catholics and PROTESTANTS, MORMONS 

AND INFIDELS, 

Have all met on one common ground, and on one subject at 
least, have become so united, as to give reason to believe that 
the time is near at hand, when they shall see eye to eye ; viz., 
they all admit that TICE k CO., No. 9 Bowery, will sell a 
beautiful and durable Hat, made in the most fashionable style, 
for a less price than any other establishment in the city of 
Gotham," 

Near the Park is stationed a man, who spends his life 
repeating, " Four cents ! any article on this board for four cents ! 
Four cents ! Only four cents ! " Think of an immortal soul 
making its advent into the body for a vocation like this ! If 
he could live without food, and be wound up like a barrel 
organ, it would be a decided improvement. 

Another man, as universally known, perhaps, as any person 
in the city, may often be seen mounted on a block in tho 
vicinity of Wall Street, proclaiming all day long, the wonderful 
virtues of Hillman and Smith's razor strops. His extempore 
orations are odd specimens of eloquence. The other day, pausing 
a moment to listen, I heard him address the crowd thus : " Now, 
my friends, let me advise you to buy one of these here strops. 
You needn't think I stands here in the cold, by the houi* 
together, from selfish reasons. No such thing. My profits is 
very small. The best part of my pay is the gratitude I know 
men must feel toward me, as soon as they try this very superior 
strop. I am willing to stand here, day after day, jest to keej) 
my fellow-beings from hurting themselves, and their wives and 



LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. -103 

children from crying at sight of their bleeding faces, all for 
want of a good razor strop. When I think of fathers of 
families being obliged to whet their razors on a bad strop, and 
the cross humour it puts 'em in, and the unhappy consequences 
to their wives and children, I feel as if I was a benefactor to 
the 2)ublic, in being able to offer them such a strop as this here. 
I've known men that have made themselves miserable, and 
made their families miserable, for years and years ; and they 
didn't none of 'em know what was the matter. Their wives and 
children thought it was a nervous disease, or a wicked heart ; 
but it was all owing to a bad razor strop. The world will 
thank me for bringing before it such a strop as this here. In 
my estimation, it is better calculated to bring comfort to your- 
self, and joy in the bosom of your family, than anything else I 
knows of. It will drive bad temper and heart-burnings from 
the family circle, and instead of gall and bitterness, you will 
have honey and sugar ; and all owing to this very superior 
strop, which I offers for two shillings." 

It is as amusing as a comedy, to observe the crowd of men 
and boys, that always gather round this street orator. Some 
are in a perfect roar of laughter, some looking on with a quiet 
expression of sly waggery, and some have their eyebrows arched 
in amazement, as if they could not rightly make out whether 
he and his razors strops did indeed drop down from the benefi- 
cent heavens, in mercy to a suffering world, or whether he was 
reeling off his long speeches merely for fun. 

He himself never smiles. He repeats his story with endless 
variations, in the most earnest and solemn manner, as if he 
really considered himself a disinterested agent, sent on a 
philanthropic mission to mankind. This imperturbable serious- 
ness, and the fact that the article he sells is generally considered 
worth the price he asks, secures him respectful treatment; but 
there is no end to the droll responses he receives from the 
passing populace. Report says that he has accumiilated $7000 
by his itinerant eloquence; and in addition to this, the pro- 
prietor in Troy, has taken him into partnership, as a reward for 
the fame he has conferred on his articles of merchandise. He 
is likewise an efficient Temperance lecturer, and has equal 
knack at making people sign the pledge, or buy a razor strop. 

After listening to his discourse, and hearing his history, I 
suggested to my companion that Luck and Knack would form 
a good subject for a facetious lecture. Like most individuals 



404 LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 

not distinguished for money-making knack, I professed more 
faith in luck; and asserted that it was the more dignified 
of the two, being something transcendental, something altogether 
above and beyond us. In proof whereof, I quoted Emerson's 
remark, " We only row, we are steered by fate." My companion 
said he could turn a boat round from the point to which it was 
steered, by a single oar skilfully used. I admitted this ought 
to settle the relative superiority of knack and luck. Still I 
bad great respect for luck ; for it was unconscious, and there- 
fore great; whereas knack was perpetually conscious of striving 
for an end. Besides, the two questions merged in one ; for it 
was great luck to have knack. Luck was necessity, and knack 
free will ; and who did not know that free will was always 
bound round by necessity? In the same jocose vein, we 
imagined pictures of knack and luck. I proposed a shower of 
puddings, one of them falling into luck's laughing mouth. 

This money-making rage is really inconvenient, as well as 
comic. Never did I see the system of catching half cents in 
change managed with such universal adroitness. The wear and 
tear of purse, to those who do not look out for the half cents, 
must exceed the large amount of gold said to be annually lost in 
Hindostan by the friction of bracelets and anklets. There is a 
wide distance indeed, between these days of rabid competition, 
and those sluggish old times, when the pedlar slowly wended 
his way over the hills, entering some picturesque abbey, with 
the golden sunset, and resting there on his way to the baron's 
castle, where he and his wares were sure to be welcomed 
as eagerly as the wandering minstrel with his harp and song. 

How marvellously has this element of commerce modified the 
character and fate of nations ! Where was there a prophet 
wise enough to foresee the changes it has already wrought? 
Property reigns so supreme in the social compact, that the 
growth of souls is trampled like a weed under its feet, and 
human life is considered of far less importance. 

" Earth, groans beneath a weight of slavish toil, 
For the poor many, measured out by rules, 
Fetched with cupidity from heartless schools, 
That to an idol, falsely called 'the wealth 
Of nations,' sacrifice a people's health, 
Body, and mind, and soul. A thirst so keen 
Is ever urging on the vast machine 
Of sleepless labour, 'mid whose dizzy wheels, 
The power least prized is that which thinks and feels." 



LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 405 

This restless whirlpool of ever-striving selfishness is thus 
described : " The crazy multitude of grown-up children move in 
their sphere like animalculse in stagnant water, seeking only- 
satisfaction in acute voracity, without being conscious of the 
fact, that they are feeding on each other's misery." 

But commerce, with all its evils, is gradually helping the 
world onward to a higher and better state. It is bringing the 
nations into companionship, and it has already taught kings 
and diplomatists that war is a losing game even to the con- 
queror. 

Thus is self-love the root of all social changes. It is the 
fundamental basis of human life, as the mineral kingdom is the 
basis of nature's orcjanised forms. Whether the love of self is 
dominant or whether it be subordinated to the love of others, 
it is always the root of action. It is an expressive coincidence, 
that an a^e in which the moral sense of mankind has been 
earnestly at work to discover the proper place of self-love, and 
its harmonious relation to the good of others, as an improved 
basis to society, is likewise the age when musicians have made 
progressive discoveries concerning the laws of thorough-bass, or 
fundamental harmony. If this fact has the significance, of 
which I think I discern some faint gleams, Beethoven indicated 
a deeper truth than he was probably conscious of, when he said 
he would allow no man to discuss religion or thorough-bass in 
his presence. 

A theory of fundamental harmony was founded on the fact 
that when a string is made to vibrate, " there is always heard, 
beside the principal sound, two other feebler sounds, one of 
which is the twelfth, and the other the seventeenth, of the 
First ; that is to say, the octave of the Fifth, and the double 
octave of the third." So it would seem that each simple tone 
contains in itself harmony. , This is beautifully illustrated by 
colours. Red, Yellow, and Blue are the three primitive colours. 
If one of them be present, the introduction of the other two 
mingled makes a very agreeable chord to the eye ; thus green 
with red, purple with yellow, and orange with deep blue. 
Moreover, one of the primitive colours brings with it the two 
others united. If you gaze on brilliant red, and suddenly tuin 
your eye to a white surface, you see a faint shadow of green ; 
if you gaze on bright yellow, you will, by a similar process, see 
purple ; if on deep blue, you will see orange. This is not the 
reflection of the colour that gives tone to your eye, as the 



406 LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 

twelfth and the seventeenth are not an echo of the sound that 
gives tone to your ear. If I rightly understand, it is, in both 
cases, the presence of the other two, that compose the perfect 
chord. 

You are aware that Fourier builds his social structure 
according to the laws of music. He calls 

13 5 

FRIENDSHIP, LOVE, AND FAMILY 

the perfect social chord. Musicians say that if the Third be 
flattened only half a tone, it carries the whole strain of music 
out of the bright and cheerful Major mode, into the mournful 
modulations of the Minor, What if lowering pure Love a 
semi-tone, perhaps into the region of se^love, and building 
our social structure on such a basis, should be the cause of 
prevailing sadness in the tune of life*? He will indeed be the 
high priest of social harmony, that can teach us how to change 
the flattened semi-tone. 

I have again fallen into speculations, which may seem to 
you like the mere "shadow of a sound." I admit that the 
queer advertisements in New York papers would seem very 
unlikely to lead thought into such channels. Yet, I assure 
you, I never go hunting after such analogies. They come to 
me, whether I will or no. Let me start from what point I 
may, an invisible air-line, like that which guides the bee to 
her cell, brings me into music. Perhaps it will remind you of 
the close of a collegiate theme — "May we all land at last in 
the great ocean of eternity." For assuredly, the attempt to 
follow spiritual significations of music to their end, is very 
similar in its results to the landing one would be likely to find 
in the vast interminable ocean. 

But you will pardon my vagaries, because you know very 
well that they are the unafiected utterance of my mood of 
mind. In good truth, I can seldom write a letter without 
making myself liable to the Vagrant Act. A witty English- 
man once said to me, "Madam, your countrymen dance as if 
they did it by act of the legislature." My pen has no such 
gift. It paces or whirls, bounds or waltzes, stejDS in the slow 
minuet, or capers in the fantastic fandango, according to the 
tune within. 



LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 407 

« 

LETTER XXIX. 

December 8, 1844. 

A Society has lately been organised here, for the Reform of 
Prisons and their Inmates. Their first object is to introduce 
into our prisons such a mode of discipline as is best calculated 
to reform criminals, by stimulating and encouraging what 
remains of good within them, while they are at the same time 
kept under strict regulations, and guided by a firm hand. 
Their next object is to render discharged convicts such assis- 
tance as will be most likely to guide them into the paths of 
sober and successful industry. 

John W. Edmonds, President of the Board of Inspectors at 
Sing Sing Prison, pleaded for the benevolent objects of the 
institution with real earnestness of heart; and brought 
forwaixl abundant statistics, carefully prepared, to show the 
need of such an association, and to prove that crime always 
diminishes in proportion to the amelioration of the laws. He 
urged the alarming fact that from 200 to 250 convicts each 
year, from Sing Sing, were returned upon society, nearly 
without money, without friends (except among the vicious), 
without character, and without employment. Of these, more 
than half belong to New York; without taking into account 
the numbers that pass through, and often stop for a season, on 
their way to other destinations. Poor, unfriended, discouraged, 
and despised, in a state of hostility with the world, which often 
has in reality done them more grievous wrong than they have 
done the world, how terribly powerful must be the temptation 
to new crimes ! 

In answer to the common plea, that most of these wretched 
people were old offenders, hardened in vice, and not likely to 
be restored by Christian efibrts, he stated that of the 934 now 
in the prison, only 154 had been in prison before; 599 of them, 
about two-thirds of the whole number, were under thirty years 
of age; 192 were under twenty-one years of age; and 27 were 
not seventeen years old, when they were sentenced. Of thirty- 
one now confirmed lunatics, twenty-two were so when they 
were committed. 

He said he had no faith whatever in the system of violence, 
which had so long prevailed in the world; the system of 
tormenting criminals into what was called good order, and of 



■iOS LETTERS FKOM NEW YORK. 

never appealing to anytliing better than the base sentiment of 
fear. He had seen enongh. in his o^vn experience, to convince 
him that, degi^aded as they were, they still had hearts that 
could be touched by kindness, consciences that might be 
aroused by appeals to reason, and aspii*ations for a better 
course of life, which often needed only the cheering voice of 
sympathy and hope, to be strengthened into permanent refor- 
mation. 

Of late, there has been a gradual amelioration of discipline 
at Sing Sing. Three thousand lashes, with a cat of six tails, 
used to be inflicted in the course of a month; now there are 
not as manv hundreds : and the conviction is constantlv ^ovr- 
ing stronger, that it -^ill be wisest, as a mere matter of policy, 
to dispense with corporeal punishment altogether. This is 
somewhat gained in the coui^e of the eighteen centuries, which 
have rolled awav, thi'oucjh rivei^ of human blood, since Chriijt 
said, "If thy brother offend thee, forgive him. I say unto thee 
not until seven times, but until seventy times seven." If our 
religion is not practicable, honest men ought not to profess it. 

A very great change has taken place in the women's depart- 
ment of the prison, under the fii'm but kind administration of 
Mrs. Famham and her colleagues, who do not discharge their 
arduous duties merely as a means of gaining a living, but who 
feel a sincere sympathy for the wretched beings intnisted to 
their care. The difference between their government and the 
old fashioned method, cannot perhaps be more concisely 
indicated than bv the followincr anecdote: — Two ministers in 
the Society of Friends travelled together, and one was much 
more successful in his labours than the other. ''How dost 
thou manage to take so much more hold of the hearts of the 
people, than I do?" said the least efficient preacher. ''I can 
explain it in few. words,"' replied the other: ''I tell people that 
if they do right they shall not be whipped. Thou sayest that if 
they do7'i't do right, they shall be whipped." 

In other words, the system now begun at Sing Sing is to 
punish as sparingly as possible, and to give cordial praise and 
increase of privileges for every indication of improvement. 
The wisdom of such a coui-se was suggested to my mind 
several years ago, by an intelligent, well-educated woman, who 
had, by intemperance, become an inmate of the almshouse at 
Boston. '"Oh!" said she, ''if they would only give us more 
encouracjement and less drivinsr : if thev would errant increased 



LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 409 

privileges for doing well, instead of threatening punishment 
for doing wrong; I could perform my tasks with a cheerful 
heart if they would only say to me, ' Do your task quickly, and 
behave well, and you shall hear music one evening in the week, 
or you may have one day of the six to read entertaining books.* 
But instead of that, it always is, 'If your task is not done well, 
you will be punished.' Oh! nobody, that has never tried it, 
knows how hard this makes work go off." 

I thought of this woman when I read Barry Cornwall's lines, 
on The Poor-House: 

' ' Enter and look ! In the high-walled yards 
Fierce men are pacing the barren ground. 

Enter the long, bare chambers I Girls 

And women are sewing without a sound — 

Sewing from morn till the dismal eve, 
And not a laugh or a song goes round. 

' ' Xo communion — no kind thought, 

Dwells in the pauper's breast of care; 
Nothing but jjain in the grievous past — 

Nothing to come, but the black despair 
Of bread m prison, bereft of friends, 
Or hungry out in the open air I"' 

Acting upon the principle to which I have alluded, the 
President at Sinor Sing, last Fourth of Julv, sent each of the 
seventy-three women prisoners a beautiful bouquet, with a note, 
asking them to receive the flowers as a testimonial of his 
approbation for their good conduct. When the matrons passed 
through the galleries, every woman came to the door of her 
cell, with the flowers in her hand, and earnest thanks, and the 
whispered "God bless you," met them at every step. Being 
afterward assembled in the chapel, they brought their flowers ; 
and while the matron talked with them like a mother, about 
the necessity of forming habits of self-government, and of the 
effect of their present conduct on their future prospects in life, 
the tears flowed plentifully, and convulsive sobs were audible. 
One of the matrons writes : 

" The eflect of this little experiment has been manifest in the 
more quiet and gentle movements of the prisoners, in their 
softened and subdued tones of voice, and in their ready and 
cheerful obedience. It has deepened my conviction that, 
however degraded by sin, or hardened by outrage and wrong, 
while Peason maintains its empire over the Mind, there is no 
heart so callous or obdurate, that the voice of Sympathy and 



410 LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 

Kindness may not reach it, or so debased, as to give no 
resj)onse to the tones of Christian Love." 

On Thanksgiving day, one of the matrons, as a reward for 
the good behaviour of the prisoners, caused her piano to be 
removed to the chapel, and tunes of praise were mingled with 
friendly exhortations. We, who live freely amid the fair sights 
and sounds of our Father's creation, can hardly imagine how 
soothing and refreshing is the voice of music to the prisoner's 
weary and desolate soul. And then the kindness of bringing 
music and flowers to them ! of ofiering to the outcast and 
degraded those graceful courtesies usually appropriated to the 
happy, the refined, and the beloved! — this touched their 
inmost hearts, even more deeply than the blessed voice of 
music. They wept like children, and some of them said, "It 
does not seem as if we could ever want to do wrong again." 

Nor are repentant words their only proofs of gratitude. 
Instead of riot, blasphemy, and obscenity, they are now distin- 
guished for order, decorum, and cheerful industry. The ofiences 
against prison discipline, in that department, formerly averaged 
forty-seven a month; they now average only seven. This 
favourable change is attributed mainly to friendly instruction 
and improved classification; according to obedience and indi- 
cations of a sincere wish to reform. One of the keepers told 
me that she now seldom had occasion to resort to anything 
harsher than to say, "It will give me great pain and trouble if 
you do not obey me. I am trying to do you good, and to 
make you as happy as circumstances permit. Surely, then, 
you will not wish to give me pain." She said it was rare, 
indeed, that this simple and afiectionate appeal was unavailing. 
Alas, for the wrongs that have been done to human hearts, 
under the mistaken idea of terrifying and tormenting sinners 
out of their sins. Satan never cast out Satan. We take back 
precisely what we give; hardness for hardness, hatred for 
hatred, selfishness for selfishness, love for love. 

I am well aware that this will sound very sentimental to 
many readers. Very likely some may jestingly describe these 
suggestions, as "a new transcendental mode of curing crime by 
music and flowers." If so, he is welcome to his mirth. For 
my own part, I cannot jest about the misery or the errors of 
any of my fellow-creatures. 

The doctrines of forgiveness and love, taught by Jesus, are 
not as men seem to suppose, mere beautiful sentimental theories. 



LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 411 

fit only for heaven: they are rational princiijles, which may 
not oniy safely, but profitably be reduced to practice on earth. 
All divine princi|)les, if suffered to flow out into the ultimates 
of life, would prove the wisest political economy. 

The assertion that society makes its own criminals, interferes 
with the theological O2:)inions of some. They argue that God 
leaves the will of man free, and therefore every individual is 
resj^onsible entirely for his own sin. Whether the same action 
is equally a sin, in the sight of God, when committed by 
individuals in totally different circumstances, I will not attempt 
to discuss. Such questions should reverently be left to Him 
who made the heart, and who alone can judge it. But I feel 
that if I were to commit a crime, with my education, and the 
social influences that prop my weakness in every direction, I 
should be a much worse sinner than a person guilty of the same 
deed, whose childhood had been passed among the lowest haunts 
of vice, and whose after years had been un visited by outward 
influences to purify and refine. The degree of conviction 
resisted would be the measure of my sin. 

The simple fact is, human beings stand between two kinds of 
influences, the inward and the outward. The inward is the 
Spirit of God, which strives with us always. The outward is 
the influence of Education, Society, Government, &c. In a 
right state of things, these two would be in perfect harmony ; 
but it is painfully obvious that they are now discordant. 
Society should stand to her poor in the relation of a parent, not 
of a master. 

People who are most unwilling to admit that external 
circumstances have an important agency in producing crime, 
are nevertheless extremely careful to place their children under 
safe outward influences. So little do they trust their free will 
to the guidance of Providence, they often fear to have them 
attend schools, taught by persons whose creeds they believe to 
be untrue. If Governments took equally paternal care, if they 
would spend more money to prevent crime, they would need to 
expend less in punishing it. In proportion as Hamburg 
Redemption Institutes increase, prisons will diminish. The 
right of Society to punish, or restrain, implies the duty to 
prevent. When Bonaparte objected to a woman's talking 
politics, Madame de Stael shrewdly replied, "In a country where 
women are beheaded, it's very natural they should ask the 
reason why." And if the children of poor and ignorant men 



412 LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 

are branded, and ruined for life, by tlie operation of civil laws, 
it is reasonable that they should be early taught those moral 
obligations on which laws are based. 

Few are aware how imperfectly most criminals understand 
the process by which they are condemned, and how very far it 
is from impressing them as a moral lesson. A young girl of 
seventeen was condemned to the State Prison for three years, 
on charge of being accomplice in a theft. Her trial occupied 
but one hour, and she had no counsel. The account she gave 
me of this brief legal performance, touched my heart most 
deeply. "They carried me into another room," said she, "and 
there were a great many strange faces ; and one gentleman 
said something to me, but I did not understand what he meant ; 
and another gentleman talked a good deal. It seemed to be all 
against me. They did not ask me anything, and nobody said 
anything for me; and then they told me I must go to Sing 
Sing for three years." Do half the criminals understand the 
proceedings against them any better than this ? That certain 
things are punished, they indeed know very well; but this 
seems to them a mere arbitrary exercise of power, to be avoided 
by cunning; for early education, and the social influences 
around them, have confounded the distinctions between right 
and wrong. 

I repeat, that Society is answerable for crime, because it is 
so negligent of duty. And I would respectfully suggest to 
legislators, what probably will have more power to attract their 
attention than any considerations of human brotherhood, viz., 
that a practical adaptation of our civil institutions to Christian 
principles would prove an immense saving of money to the 
State. The energy spent in committing crime, and in punish- 
ing crime, is a frightful waste of human labour. Society 
calculates its mechanical forces better than its moral. Tliey do 
not observe, that "on the occasion of every great crime, a 
proportionally great force was in motion;" and they do not 
reflect how different would be the product of the social sum if 
that force had been wisely instead of unwisely employed. Add 
to this the alarming consideration, that crime hardened by 
severity is continually sent back upon society; that society 
thrusts at it with a thousand spear points, and goads it to 
desperation, to be again punished by a renewal of the hard- 
ening process. 

Inquiry into the causes of crime, and the means of ijrevention, 



LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 413 

cannot receive too much attention from, the wise and good. 
"The soil of Vesuvius has been explored," says Schiller, "to 
discover the origin of its eruptions; and why is less attention 
paid to a moral than to a physical phenomenon 1 Why do we 
not equally regard the nature and situation of the things which 
surround a man, until the tinder within him takes fire"? " 

Poulmann, lately beheaded in Paris, for robbery and murder, 
when his head was under the axe, said: "I owe society a 
grudge, because it condemned me to the galleys when I was 
only seventeen. After the expiration of the term for which I 
was sentenced, there was still enough stuff left in me to make 
an honest man. But I was always pointed at as a liberated 
galley slave." 

In connection with this subject, I would most urgently 
entreat all who listen to me, to be very cautious how they 
treat any person for a first crime. I have known young* girls 
of sixteen sent to Blackwell's Island, for stealing property valued 
at twenty- five cents. Once there, seen by visitors in company 
with prostitutes and thieves, haunted by a continual sense of 
degradation, is their future course likely to be other than a 
downward one"? To employers, who take such harsh measures 
with erring domestics, instead of friendly exhortation, and 
Christian interest in the welfare of a human soul, I always 
want to say. Ah, if she were thy own daughter, dependent on 
the kindness and forbearance of strangers, is it thns you would 
have them treat her? If she once had a mother, who watched 
her cradle tenderly, and folded her warmly to a loving heart, 
treat her gently for that mother's sake. If her childhood was 
unnurtured, and uncheered by the voice of love, then treat her 
more gently, for that very reason; and remember the saying, 
"Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these, 
my brethren, ye have done it unto me." 

I would likewise entreat those who happen to know of some 
delinquency in a fellow-being, to keep the secret faithfully, so 
long as his life gives assurance of sincere amendment. A 
very young man, who is now in Sing Sing, when tried for 
his second offence, told a story at the bar, which was in 
substance as follows: "My first offence was committed more 
in thoughtlessness than with deliberate wickedness. But I 
felt that I was to blame, and was willing to bear the penalty 
like a man. In prison, I formed the strongest resolutions to 
atone for my fault by a life of honest usefulness. When my 



414 LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 

time was out, I succeeded, after a good deal of difficulty, in 
obtaining employment. I did my best to gain tlie confidence 
of my employer, and succeeded. Every day I felt my manhood 
grow stronger. But at last a person came into the store, who 
eyed me keenly, and I turned pale under his gaze. He told 
my employer that he had seen me among the convicts at Sing 
Sing; and I was sternly dismissed from his service. I went to 
Philadelphia to seek for any honest employment I could find; 
but a man, who saw me there, told me if I did not quit the 
city in twenty-four hours, he would expose me. I came back 
disheartened to New York. I had spent my last dollar. 
Christians would not give me a home; gamblers and thieves 
would; and here I am again on my way to prison." 

Isaac T. Hopper, agent of the benevolent association I have 
mentioned, related several highly interesting incidents, which 
occurred while he was one of the inspectors of the Philadelphia 
prison. 

He said that Mary Norris, a middle aged woman, who had 
been frequently re-committed, on one occasion, begged him to 
intercede for her, that she might go out. "I am afraid thou 
wouldst come back again soon," said he. 

"Very likely; I expect to be brought back soon," she 
answered, with stolid indifference of manner. 

"Then where will be the sfood of lettinof thee ouf? " 

"I should like to go out," she replied. "It would seem 
good to feel free a little while, in the open air and the sun- 
shine." 

" But if thou enjoys liberty so much, why dost thou allow 
thyself to be brought back again?" 

"How can I help it? When I go out of prison, nobody 
will employ me. No respectable people will let me come into 
their houses. I must go to such friends as I have. If they 
steal, or commit other offences, I shall be taken up with them. 
Whether I am guilty or not, is of no consequence : nobody will 
believe me innocent. They will all say, ' She is an old convict. 
Send her back to prison. That is the best place for lier.^ O, 
yes, I expect to come back soon. There is no use in my trying 
to do better. " 

Much affected by her tone of utter hopelessness. Friend 
Hopper said, " But if I could obtain steady employment for 
bhee, where thou wouldst be treated kindly, and paid for thy 
services, wouldst thou really try to behave well % " 



LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 415 

Her countenance brightened, and she eagerly replied, " Indeed, 
I would. " 

The kind-hearted inspector nsed his influence to procure her 
dismissal, and provided a place for her, as head nurse in a 
hospital for the poor. She remained there more than seven- 
teen years, and discharged the duties of her situation so 
faithfully, that she gained the resj)ect and confidence of all who 
knew her. 

Patrick McKever, a poor Irishman in Philadelphia, was 
many years ago sentenced to be hung for burglary. For some 
reason or other, he was reprieved at the foot of tlie gallows, 
and his sentence changed to ten years' imprisonment. He 
was a man of few words, and hope seemed almost dead within 
him ; but when Friend Hopper, who became inspector during 
the latter part of his term, talked to him like a brother, his 
heart was evidently touched by the voice of kindness. After 
]iis release, he returned to his trade, and conducted himself in a 
sober, exemplary manner. The inspector often met him, and 
spoke words of friendly encouragement. Things were going on 
very satisfactorily, when a robbery was committed in the 
neighbourhood, and Patrick was immediately arrested. His 
friend went to the Mayor, and inquired what proof there was 
that he committed the robbery. " No proof; but he is an old 
convict, and that is enough to condemn him, " was the answer. 

" Nay, it is oiot enough, " replied Friend Hopper. " He has 
suffered severely for the crime he did commit ; and since he 
has shown the most sincere desire to reform, it never ought to 
be mentioned against him. I think I know his state of mind, 
and I will take the responsibility of maintaining that he is 
not guilty. But to all his urgent representations, he received 
the answer, '' He is an old convict ; and that is enough." 

The poor fellow, hung his head and said, in tones of despair, 
"Well then, I must make up my mind to spend the remainder 
of my days in prison." 

"Thou wert not concerned in this robbery, wert thou?" said 
Isaac, looking earnestly in his face. 

"Indeed, I was not. God be my witness, I want to lead an 
lionest life, and be at peace with all men. But what good will 
that do ? They will all say. He is an old convict, and that is 
enough." 

Friend Hopper told him he would stand by him. He did 
so ; and offered to be bail for his appearance. The gratitude of 



416 LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 

the poor fellow was overwhelming. He sobbed like a child. 
His innocence was afterward proved, and to the day of his 
death, he continued a virtuous and useful citizen. What would 
have been his fate, if no friend had appeared for him] if every 
human heart had refused to trust him? 

The venerable speaker told the story of two lads, one fifteen 
and the other seventeen, who had been induced by a bad father 
to swear falsely, to gratify his own revengeful feelings. They 
were detected, and sent to prison. When Friend Hopper saw 
them arrive at dusk, hand-cuffed and chained together, their 
youth and desolate appearance touched his compassionate 
feelings. "Be of good heart, my poor lads," said he; "You can 
retrieve this one false step, if you will but try. You may make 
useful and respectable men yet." He took care to place them 
away from the contagion of those more hardened in vice, and 
from time to time, he praised their good conduct, and spoke to 
them encouragingly of the future. After a while he proposed 
to the Board of Inspectors to recommend them to the Governor 
for pardon. He met with some fopjoosition, but his arguments 
finally prevailed, and he and another gentleman were appointed 
to wait on the Governor. His request was granted, after 
considerable hesitation, and only on condition that worthy men 
could be found, who would take them as apprentices. Friend 
Hopper took the responsibility, and succeeded in binding one 
of them to a respectable turner, and the other to a carpenter. 
After giving them much good advice, he told them to come to 
him whenever they were in difficulty, and to consider him a 
father. For a long time, they were in the habit of spending all 
their leisure evenings with him, and were well pleased to listen 
to the reading of instructive books. These brothers became 
respectable and thriving mechanics, married worthy women, 
and brought up their families in the paths of sobriety and 
usefulness. In the days of their prosperity. Friend Hopper 
introduced them to the Governor, as the lads he had been so 
much afraid to pardon. The magistrate took them by the hand, 
most cordially, and thanked them for the great public good they 
had done by their excellent example. 

Out of as many as fifty similar cases, in which he had been 
interested. Friend Hopper said he recollected but two, that had 
resulted unfavourably. 

The dungeon and the scourge were formerly considered the 
only efiectual way of restraining maniacs, but experience has 



LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 417 

proved that love is the best controlling power. When Pinel, 
the humane French physician, pro[)osecl to try this experiment 
in the bedlam at Bicetre, many supposed his life would fall a 
sacrifice. But he walked fearlessly into dungeons where raving 
maniacs had been chained, some ten years, some forty years; 
and with gentle words, he convinced them that they were free 
to go out into the sunshine and open air, if they would allow 
him to remove their chains and put on strait waistcoats. At 
first, they did not believe it, because they had been so often 
deceived. When they found it true, nothing could equal their 
gratitude and joy. They obeyed their deliverer with the 
utmost docility, and finally became very valuable assistants in 
the management of the establishment. 

Dorothea L. Dix, our American Mrs. Fry, the God-appointed 
missionary to prison and alms-houses, told me that experience 
had more than confirmed her fiiith in the power of kindness, 
over the insane and vicious. 

Among the hundreds of crazy people, with whom her sacred 
mission has brought her into companionship, she has not found 
one individual, however fierce and turbulent, that could not be 
calmed by Scripture and prayer, uttered in low and gentle 
tones. The power of the religious sentiment over these shat- 
tered souls seems perfectly miraculous. The worship of a quiet, 
loving heart, afiects them like a voice from heaven. Tearing 
and rending, yelling and stamping, singing and groaning, 
gradually subside into silence, and they fall on their knees, or 
gaze upward with clasped hands, as if they saw through the 
opening darkness a golden gleam from their Father's throne of 
love. 

On one occasion, this missionary of mercy was earnestly cau- 
tioned not to approach a raving maniac. He yelled frightfully, 
day and night, rent his garment, plucked out his hairs, and was 
so violent, that it was supposed he would murder any one who 
ventured within his reach. Miss Dix seated herself at a little 
distance, and without appearing to notice him, began to read, 
with serene countenance and gentle voice, certain passages of 
Scripture, filled with the spirit of tenderness. His shouts 
gradually subsided, until at last he became perfectly still. 
When she paused, he said meekly, " Read me some more ; it 
does me good." And when, after a prolonged season of worship, 
she said, ''I must go away now;" he eagerly replied, " No, you 
cannot go. God sent you to me ; and you must not go." By 

2 D 



418 LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 

kind words, and a promise to come again, slie finally obtained 
permission to depart. " Give me your hand," said he. She 
gave it, and smiled upon him. The wild expression of his 
haggard countenance softened to tearfulness, as he said, '' You 
treat me right. God sent you." 

On another occasion, she had been leading some twenty or 
thirty maniacs into worship, and seeing them all quiet as 
lambs gathered into the Shepherd's fold, she prepared to go 
forth to other duties. In leaving the room, she passed an insane 
young man, with whom she had had several interviews. He 
stood with hands clasped, and a countenance of the deepest 
reverence. With a friendly smile, she said, " Henry, are you 
well to-day ? " " Hush ! — hush ! " replied he, sinking his voice 
to a whisper, and gazing earnestly on the space around her, 
" Hush ! — there are angels with you ! They have given you 
their voice ! " 

But let not the formalist suppose that he can work such 
miracles as these, in the professed name of Jesus. Yain is the 
Scripture or the prayer, repeated by rote. They must be the 
meek utterance of a heart overflowing with love ; for to sucli 
only do the angels ''lend their voice." 



LETTER XXX. 

December 24, 1844. 

You ask me for my impressions of Ole Bui's Niagara. It is 
like asking an ^olian harp to tell what the great organ of Frey- 
burg does. But since you are pleased to say that you value my 
impressions, because they are always my own, and not another's ; 
because they are si:)ontaneous, disinterested, and genuine; I 
will give you the tones as they breathed through my soul, 
without anxiety to have them pass for more than they are 
worth. 

I did not know what the composer intended to express. I 
would have avoided knowing if the information had been 
offered ; for I wished to hear what the music itself would say to 
me. And thus it spoke : The serenely beautiful opening told 
of a soul going forth peacefully into the calm bright atmosphere. 
It passes along, listening to the half-audible, many-voiced 



LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 419 

murmurings of the summer woods. Gradually, tremulous 
vibrations fill the air, as of a huge cauldron seething in the 
distance. The echoing sounds rise and swell, and finally roar 
and thunder. In the midst of this, stands the soul, striving to 
utter its feelings. 

" Like to a mighty heart the music seems, 
That yearns with melodies it cannot speak." 

It wanders away from the cataract, and again and again 
returns within sound of its mighty echoes. Then calmly, 
reverentially, it passes away, listening to the receding chorus of 
Nature's tremendous drums and trombones; musing solemnly 
as it goes, on that vast sheet of waters, rolling now as it has 
rolled, "long, long time ago." 

Grand as I thought Niagara when I first heard it, it opened 
upon me with increasing beauty when I heard it repeated. I 
then observed many exquisite and graceful touches, which were 
lost in the magnitude of the first impression. The multitudi- 
nous sounds are bewildering in their rich variety. 

" The cataracts blow their trumpets from the steep." 

" The whispering air 
Sends inspiration from the rocky heights, 
And dark recesses of the caverned rocks ; 
The little rill, and waters numberless, 
Blend their notes with the loud streams." 

There is the pattering of water-drops, gurglings, twitterings, 
and little gushes of song. 

It reminded me of a sentence in the Noctes Ambrosianse, 
beautifully descriptive of its prevailing character: "It keeps up 
a bonnie wild musical sough, like that o* swarming bees, 
spring-startled birds, and the voices of a hundred streams, some 
wimpling awa' ower the Elysian meadows, and ithers I'oaring at 
a distance frae the clefts." 

The sublime waterfall is ever present, with its echoes; but 
present in a calm contemplative soul. One of the most poetic 
minds I know, after listening to this music, said to me, "The 
first time I saw Niagara, I came u])on it through the woods, in 
the clear sunlight of a summer's morning; and these tones are 
a perfect transcript of my emotions." In truth, it seems to me 
a perfect disembodied poem: a most beautiful mingling of 
natural sounds with the reflex of their impressions on a refined 
and romantic mind. This serene grandeur, this pervading 



420 LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 

beauty, which softens all the greatness, gave the composition 
its greatest charms, to those who love poetic expression in 
music; but it renders it less captivating to the public in general, 
than they had anticipated. Had it been called a Pastorale 
composed within hearing of Niagara, their preconceived ideas 
would have been more in accordance with its calm bright 
majesty. 

The Solitude of the Prairie I have lately heard for the 
first time; and never did music so move the inmost depths of 
my soul. Its spiritual expression breathes through heavenly 
melodies. With a voice earnest and plaintive as the nightin- 
gale's, it spoke to me of inward conflict ; of the soul going forth 
into solitude, alone and sad. The infinite stretches itself out, 
in darkness and storm. Through the fierce tempestuous 
struggle, it passes alone, alone, as the soul must ever go through 
all its sternest conflicts. Then comes self-renunciation, humility 
and peace. And thus does the exquisitely beautiful music of 
this Prairie Solitude lay the soul lovingly into its rest. 

A friend acquainted with prairie scenery, said it brought 
vividly before her, those "dream-like, bee-sung, murmuring, and 
musical plains." 

Many, who have hitherto been moderate in their enthusiasm 
about Ole Bui, recognise in these new compositions more genius 
than they supposed him to possess. Tastefully intertwined 
Fantasias, or those graceful musical garlands, Rondos, might 
be supjDosed to indicate merely a pleasing degree of talent and 
skill. But those individuals must be hard to convince, who do 
not recognise the presence of genuine inspiration in the earnest 
tenderness of the Mother's Prayer, that sounds as if it were com- 
posed at midnight, alone with the moon; in the mad, wild life of 
the Tarantella; in the fiery, spirit stirring eloquence of the Polacca 
Guerriera, composed at Naples, in view of Vesuvius flaming 
through the darkness; in the deep spiritual melody of the 
Prairie Solitude; and in the serene majesty of Niagara. 

If I appear to speak with too much decision, it is simply 
because my own impressions are distinct and strong, and I 
habitually utter them, alike without disguise, and without 
pretension. In the presence of mere skill, I know not what to 
say. It may please me somewhat; but whether it is more or 
less excellent than some other thing, I cannot tell. But bring 
me into the presence of genius, and I know it by rapid intui- 
tion, as quick as I know a sunbeam. I cannot tell how I 



LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 421 

know it. I simply say, This is genius; as I say, This is a sun- 
beam. 

It is an old dispute, that between genius and criticism, and 
probably it will never be settled; for it is one of the manifold 
forms of conservatism and innovation. In all departments of 
life, genius is on the side of progress, and learning on the side 
of established order. Genius comes a prophet from the future, 
to guide the age onward. Learning, the Lawgiver, strives to 
hold it back upon the past. But the Prophet always revolu- 
tionises the laws; for thereunto was he sent. Under his 
powerful hand, the limitations gradually yield and flow, as. 
metals melt into new forms at the touch of fire. 

This is as true of music, as of everything else. Its rules 
have been constantly changing. What is established law now, 
was unknown, or shocking, a hundred years ago. Every great 
genius that has appeared in the art, has been accused of 
violating the rules. The biographer of Haydn says: "The 
charming little thoughts of the young musician, the warmth of 
his style, the liberties which he sometimes allowed himself, 
called forth against him all the invective of the musical 
monastery. They reproached him with errors of counterpoint, 
heretical modulations £knd movements too daring. His in- 
troduction o^ ■prestissimo made all the critics of Vienna shudder." 
An English nobleman once begged liiin to explain the reason of 
certain modulations and arrangements in one of his quartettes. 
"I did so because it has a good effect," replied the composer. 
*' But 1 can prove to you that it is altogether contrary to the 
rules," said the nobleman. " Very well," said Hadyn, " arrange 
it in your own way, hear both played, and tell me which you 
like the best." But how can your way be the best, since it is 
contrary to the rules'?" urged the nobleman. "Because it is 
the most agreeable," replied Haydn; and the critic went away 
unconvinced. 

Beethoven was constantly accused of violating the rules. In 
one of his compositions, various things were pointed out to him 
as deviations from the laws, expressly forbidden by masters 
of the art. ^^ TJiey forbid them, do theyl" said Beethoven. 
" Very well. / allow them. " 

Do not understand me as sj^eaking scornfully of knowledge- 
and critical skill. On the contrary, I labour with earnest 
industry, to acquire more and more knowledge of rules, in all 
the forms of art. But, in all the higher and more spiritual 



422 LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 

manifestations, I recognise laws only as temporary and fliixional 
records of the progressive advancement of tlie soul. I do not 
deny the usefulness of criticism; but genius forever remains 
the master, and criticism the servant. 

Whether critics will consider Niagara as abounding with 
faults, I cannot conjecture. It is their business to analyse 
genius, and the mischief is, they are generally prone to dissect 
in the shadow of their own hands. To speak playfully, it is 
my own belief that cataract-thunderings, sea-moanings, tree- 
breathings, wind-whistlings, and bird-warblings, are none of 
them composed according to the rules. They ought all to 
be sent to Paris or Rome, to finish their education, and go 
silent meanwhile, unless they can stop their wild everlasting 
variations. 

"Over everything stands its doemon, or soul," says Emerson; 
"and as the form of the thing is reflected to the eye, so is the 
soul of the thing reflected by a melody. The sea, the mountain- 
ridge, Niagara, super-exist in precantations, which sail like 
odours in the air; and when any man goes by with ears 
sufficiently fine, he overhears them, and endeavours to write 
them down, without diluting or depraving them." Thanks to 
"old, ever-young Norway," she has sent us her finely-organised 
son, to overhear the voices and echoes, and give them to us in 
immortal music. 

How subtle and all-pervading is this spiritual essence ! How 
mysterious its action on the material world! You are aware 
that musicians greatly prefer very old instruments. There is 
a house in France whose business it is to collect pine, from one 
hundred to two hundred years old, for the manufacture of 
musical instruments. 

That these are more mellow in tone than those made 
of new wood, may be owing to the evaporation of resinous 
particles. But it is incomprehensible how an instrument can 
be rendered more perfect by a good performer, while its tone is 
injured by an unskilful one. Yet musicians all agree that it is 
so. The spirit that plays upon it seems to pass into the 
substance. The inside of a violin, that has been much used, is 
indented with vibrations, like tracks on a sea beach; but how 
these afiect the tone, it is difficult to conjecture. 

The small sounding post in the interior of Ole Bui's violin 
being newer than the rest, disturbed his ear with imperfect 
vibrations. While he was in Philadelphia, some accident, as 



LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 423 

Ole Bui expresses it, "killed the double-bass;" that is, crushed 
the instrument. He had often observed that the tone of this 
double-bass indicated age, and the habit of being well played 
on. He therefore bought the pieces, and with these su^jplied 
the place of the newer wood, which had disturbed his ear. 
His violin, which before seemed perfect in its clear, rich tones, 
has, by this slight circumstance, gained an added sweetness. 

Are not vibrations continually marked thus on the soul, by 
all we see and hear? Is not that refined power of enjoying 
beauty, which we gradually and insensibly acquire by practice 
of the eye and ear, produced by a process similar to that Avhich 
improves the tone of an instrument accustomed to a master's 
touch? Sure I am, that my soul will always be in better tune 
for having been played upon by good music. 

" When the stream of sound, 
Which overflowed the soul, had passed away, 
A consciousness surWved that it had left 
Deposited upon the silent shore 
Of memory, images and gentle thoughts, 
Which cannot die, and will not be destroyed. " 

America in taking the Norwegian minstrel thus warmly to 
her heart, receives more than she can give. His visit has done, 
and will do, more than any other cause, to waken and extend a 
love of music throughout the country; and when love exists, it 
soon takes form in science. All things that are alive are born 
of the heart. 



LETTER XXXI. 

December 31, 1844. 

Kapid approximation to the European style of living is more 
and more observable in this city. The number of servants in 
livery visibly increases every season. Foreign artistic uj^hol- 
sterers assert that there will soon be more houses in New York 
furnished according to the fortune and taste of noblemen, than 
there are in Paris or London; and this prophecy may well be 
believed, when the fact is considered that it is already not 
very uncommon to order furniture for a single room, at the 
cost of ten thousand dollars. There would be no reason to 
regret this lavishness, if the convenience and beauty of social 
environment were really increased in proportion to the expendi- 



424 LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 

ture, and if there were a progressive tendency to equality in 
the distribution. But, alas, a few moments' walk from saloons 
superbly furnished in the style of Louis XIV., brings us to 
Loafers' Hall, a dreary desolate apartment, where shivering 
little urchins pay a cent apiece, for the privilege of keeping 
out of watchmen's hands, by sleeping on boards ranked in 
tiers. 

But the effects of a luxurious and artificial life are sad enough 
on those who indulge in it, without seeking for painful contrast 
among the wretched poor. Sallow complexions, feeble steps, 
and crooked spines, already show an obvious deterioration in 
beauty, grace, and vigour. Spiritual bloom and elasticity are 
still more injured by modes of life untrue to nature. The 
characters of women suffer more than those of men, because 
their resources are fewer. Very many things are considered 
unfeminine to be done, and of those duties which are feminine 
by universal consent, few are deemed genteel by the upper 
classes. It is not genteel for mothers to wash and dress their 
own children, or make their clothing, or teach them, or romp 
with them in the open air. Thus the most beautiful and 
blessed of all human relations performs but half its healthy 
and renovating mission. The full, free, joyful growth of heart 
and soul is everywhere impeded by artificial constraint, and 
nature has her fountains covered by vanity and pride. Some 
human souls, finding themselves fenced within such narrow 
limits by false relations, seek fashionable distinction, or the 
excitement of gossij), fiirtation, and perpetual change, because 
they can find no other unforbidden outlets for their irrepressible 
activity of mind and heart. A very few, of nature's noblest 
and strongest, quietly throw off the weight that presses on 
them, and lead a comparatively true life in the midst of shams, 
which they reprove only by example. Those who can do this, 
without complaint or noise, and attempt no defence of their 
peculiar course, except the daily beauty of their actions, will 
work out their freedom at last, in the most artificial society 
that was ever constructed ; but the power to do this requires a 
rare combination of natural qualities. For the few who do 
accomplish this diflScult task, I feel even more respect than I do 
for those who struggle upward under the heavy burden of 
early poverty. " For wealth bears heavier on talent, than 
poverty. Under piles of gold and thrones, who knows how 
many spiritual giants may lie crushed and buried V I once 



LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 425 

saw a burdock shoot up so vigorously, that it threw off a piece 
of board in the platform, which covered it from light and air. 
I had great respect for the brave plant, and even carried my 
sympathy so far, as to reproach myself for not having lifted the 
board it was trying so hard to raise, instead of watching it 
curiously, to see how much it could do. The pressure of 
artificial life, I cannot take off from souls that are born in the 
midst of it ; and few have within themselves such uplifting life 
as the burdock. 

It is one of the saddest sights to see a young girl, born of 
wealthy and worldly parents, full of heart and soul, her kindly 
impulses continually checked by etiquette, her noble energies 
repressed by genteel limitations. She must not presume to 
love anybody, till father and mother find a suitable match; she 
must not laugh loud, because it is vulgar ; she must not walk fast, 
because it is ungenteel ; she must not work in the garden, for 
fear the sun and wind may injure her complexion; she must 
sew nothing but gossamer, lest it mar the delicacy of her hands; 
she must not study, because gentlemen do not admire literary 
ladies. Thus, left without ennobling objects of interest, the 
feelings and energies are usually concentrated on frivolous and 
unsatisfactory pursuits, and woman becomes a by- word and a 
jest, for her giddy vanity, her love of dress and beaux. 

Others, of a deeper nature, but without sufficient clearness of 
perception, or energy of will, to find their way into freedom, 
become inert and sad. They acquire a certain amount of 
accomplishments, because society requires it, and it is less 
tedious than doing nothing. They walk languidly through the 
routine of genteel amusements, until they become necessary as 
a habit, though they impart little pleasure. I have heard 
such pesons open their hearts, and confess a painful conscious- 
ness of being good for nothing, of living without purpose or 
aim. But as active usefulness is the only mode of satisfying 
the human soul, and as usefulness is ungenteel, there was no 
help for them, except through modes that would rouse the 
opposition of relatives. And so they moved on, in their daily 
automaton revolutions, with a vague, half-smothered hope that 
life had something in store for them, more interesting than the 
past had been. Thus the crew of the Benedict Arnold, when 
they approached the shore of New England, dismantled, in a 
dark cold night, danced in a circle, to keep themselves from 
freezing, till the light should dawn. But unless light is within, 



426 LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 

there come no clear directions from outward circumstances ; 
and the cliance is that the half-stifled souls will enter into some 
uncongenial marriage, merely for the sake of novelty and 
(change of scene. 

Not unfrequently have I heard women, who were surrounded 
by all the advantages that outward wealth can give, say, with 
sad and timid self-reproach, " I ought to be happy. It is my 
own fault that I am not. But, I know not how it is, I cannot 
get up an interest in anything." When I remind them tliat 
Richter said, ''I have fire-proof perennial enjoyments, called 
employments," few have faith in such a cure for the inanity of 
life. But the only way to attain habitual content and cheerful- 
ness, is by the active use of our faculties and feelings. Mrs. 
Somerville finds too much excitement and pleasure in her 
astronomical investigations, to need the poor stimulus of ex- 
travagant expenditure, or gossiping about her neighbours. Yet 
the astronomer discharges all womanly duties with beautiful 
propriety. She takes nothing from her family. She merely 
gives to science those hours which many women in the same 
station waste in idleness or dissipation. 

What can be more charming than the example of Mrs. 
Huber, devoting herself to the study of Natural History, to 
assist her blind husband in his observations ^ Or Mrs. Blake, 
making graceful drawings in her husband's studio, working ofl' 
the impressions of his plates, and colouring them beautifully 
with her own hand ? Compare a mere leader of ton with the 
noble German Countess, Julie Yon Egloffstein, who dared to 
follow her genius for Art, though all the prejudices of people 
in her own rank were strongly arrayed against it. Mrs. 
Jameson says, " When I have looked at the Countess Julie in 
her painting room, surrounded by her drawings, models, casts — 
all the powers of her exuberant, enthusiastic mind, flowing free 
in their natural direction, I have felt at once pleasure, admira- 
tion, and respect." The same writer says, " In general, the 
conscious power of maintaining themselves, habits of attention 
and manual industry in women, the application of our feminine 
superfluity of sensibility and imagination to a tangible result, 
have produced fine characters." 

That woman is slowly making her way into freer life is evinced 
by the fact that, in a few highly cultivated countries, literature 
is no longer deemed a disparagement to woman, and even 
professed authorship does not involve loss of caste in Society. 



LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 427 

Maria Edgeworth, Mary Howitt, Frederika Bremer, our own 
admii-able and excellent Catherine Sedgwick, and many others 
widely known as writers, were placed in the genteel ranks of 
society by birth ; but they are universally regarded with 
increased respect, because they have enlarged their bounds of 
usefulness to strengthen and refresh thousands of minds. 

Dorothea L. Dix, when she retired from school teaching, 
because the occupation disagreed with her health, had a 
competence that precluded the necessity of further exertion. 
" Now she has nothing to do, but to be a lady and enjoy 
herself,'' said an acquaintance. But Miss Dix, though charac- 
terised by a most womanly sense of propriety, did not think it 
lady-like to be useless, or enjoyment to be indolent. "In a 
world where there is so much to be done," said she, "I felt 
strongly impressed that there must be something for me to do." 
Circumstances attracted her attention to the insane inmates of 
prisons and alms-houses ; and for several years, she has been to 
them a missionary of mercy, soothing them by her gentle 
influence, guiding them by her counsel, and greatly ameliorating 
their condition by earnest representations to selectmen and 
legislators. Her health has improved wonderfully under this 
continual activity of body, mind, and heart. 

Frederika Bremer, in her delightful book called " Home," tells 
of one of the unmarried daughters of a large family who evinced 
similar wisdom. She obtained from her father the sum that 
would have been her marriage portion, established a neat 
household for herself, and adopted two friendless orphan girls to 
educate. 

** Thou may est own the world, with health 
And unslumbering powers ; 
Industry alone is wealth, 
What we do is ours." 

Use is the highest law of our being, and it cannot be 
disobeyed with impunity. The more alive and earnest the 
soul is by nature, the more does its vitality need active use, 
and its earnestness an adequate motive. It will go well with 
society when it practically illustrates Coleridge's beautiful defi- 
nition: "Labour should be the pleasant exercise of sane minds 
in healthy bodies. " 

But to fill employments with a divine life, they must be 
performed with reference to others; for we can really enjoy 
only that of which we impart freely. The following extract 



428 LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 

from one of Beetlioven's letters exhibits the human soul in the 
noblest exercise of its immortal powers; viz, embodying the 
highest conceptions of Art, from a genuine love of Art, warmed 
by the motive of doing good to others. He writes thus: "My 
compositions are well paid, and I may say I have more orders 
than I can well execute. I ask my terms, and am paid. 
You see this is an excellent thing; as, for instance, I see a 
a friend in want, and my purse does not at the moment permit 
me to assist him, I have but to sit down and write, and my 
friend is no longer in need. " 

The laws of our being are such that we must perform some 
degree of use in the world, whether we intend it or not ; but 
we can deprive ourselves of its indwelling joy, by acting 
entirely from the love of self. The manufacturer benefits 
others somewhat by the cloth he makes, and the baker by his 
bread. But if they seek to enrich themselves only, by the use 
of poor materials, and the payment of prices that o^^press their 
workmen, they take out of the use that divine life which 
imparts to the soul perpetual youth and bloom. Money thus 
acquired never satisfies the possessor; for, in the process of 
making it, he parts with the state of mind which is alone 
capable of enjoying hapj)iness. The stories of men selling 
their souls to the devil, for treasures which merely tantalize 
them, are not mere fables. Thousands of poor rich men feel 
the truth in their daily experience. 

To obtain unfailing spiritual wealth by cheerfully imparting 
of what we have, does not require this world's riches, or genius 
like Beethoven's. The poorest and least endowed can secure 
the treasure, by a loving readiness to serve others, according 
to their gifts. The lady who plants bulbs, and gathers garden- 
seeds, and tries curious horticultural experiments, has gained 
much by the mere innocent occupation of her time and thoughts. 
But if she is unwilling to give away rare seeds and plants, if 
she cultivates them only for the sake of having something 
liandsomer than her neighbours can have, she takes the heart 
out of her beautiful employment, and renders it a spectral 
pleasure. But if she gives a portion of vegetables to a poor 
widow who has no'^land, if she invites the aged and destitute 
invalids into her pleasant walks, if she gives bouquets to poor 
children, and strives to make all the neighbouring gardens as 
beautiful as her own, why then she really possesses her garden, 
and makes it an avenue of paradise. 



LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 429 

Those who can do nothing more, can now and then read a 
pleasant book to some old man stricken with blindness, or teach 
a coloured child to write, or some poor Irish woman to read, 
or some young housewife how to make bread. Children are 
found to improve most rapidly, and make lighter work of study, 
when they are alternately employed in teaching others, who 
know a little less than themselves. The form of the use is of 
small consequence. Whatever our gifts may be, the love of 
imparting them for the good of others brings heaven into the 
soul. 

You may think these theories sound well, and might work 
admirably if this world were heaven; yet they too utter 
the prayei', "May thy kingdom come on earth, as it is in 
heaven." This wide distance between our practical life and 
the religion we profess, teaches, too plainly to be misunder- 
stood, that men really do not believe that it would be wise or 
safe to practise the maxims of Christ in a world like this. I 
remember a wealthy family, who scrupulously observed all the 
outward forms of Christianity, and inculcated the utmost 
reverence for its precepts. The children were trained to attend 
church regularly, and read the Bible every morning. But 
when one of the sons took it into his head that the teachings of 
the New Testament were to be applied to daily life and public 
affairs, they were in the utmost consternation at the ungentility 
of his views, and the oddity of his proceedings. 

But I am preaching a sermon instead of writing a letter. If 
one ever falls into a moralising vein, they are likely to do it on 
the last day of the year. I bid you an affectionate farewell, 
with this New Year's wisli for you and myself: 

*' So may we live, that every hour 
May die, as dies the natural flower, 
A self-reviving thing of power ; 
That every thought, and every deed, 
May hold within itself the seed 
Of future good and future meed." 



THE ENI>. 



THE LAST SUNSET. 



"Let me look once more on what my Divine Father has diffused even 
here, as a faint intimation of what He has somewhere else. I am pleased 
with this, as a distant outskirt, as it were, of the Paradise towards 
which I am going." — John Foster. 



Close not the casement, love : 
Nay, raise the curtain, — I would look once more 
On the bright stream and autumn-tinted grove, 
Our own blue lake and its dark mountain shore ; 

All we so long have known, 
And loved with that deep passion of the heart, 

Which cannot be a thing of earth alone. 
Which must of our immortal life be part. 

Yet, I would gaze again. 
At the old sunset hour, on earth and sky, 

Though doubting not its image will remain, 
One of the memories which can never die. 

How brightly lingei'S still 
That golden glory in the radiant west ! 

How its reflection glows, on wood and hill. 
The rushing river, and the hike's calm breast ! 

I go to scenes more fair, 
More glorious — yet to these affection clings ; 
First tokens here of what awaits us there. 
Time's passing types of everlasting things. 

I thank Thee, my God, 
My Father ! for the goodness which has given 

So much to beautify our brief abode. 
Our pilgrim path as Thy redeemed to heaven. 

And now Thy voice I hear : — 
Thou callest, I obey, — well pleased I come. 
Leaving the outer courts, so fair, so dear. 
For higher joys within my Father's home ! 

//. L. L. 



